What's a quote that has stuck with you for your whole life?
I always loved browsing such posts on reddit, so thought I should make one on lemmy too
Edit: Usually these kind of posts only used to have excerpts from books or ancient proverbs, but now I am seeing a lot more quotes from shows/movies/games are also resonating with people. It's pretty cool to see.
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
Marcus Aurelius
When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down... with the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!
Cave Johnson, Portal 2
Maybe not words to live by, but certainly a memorable quote.
Not my whole life but ever since I learned it twenty years ago in the army. "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast". It's a saying that means to learn things carefully, slowly, and methodically. When you are learning like this speed will follow as a natural progression. So if you learn something slowly and smoothly it will translate into being quick and doing it correctly. I have applied this to all sorts of different things in life and it has never failed me.
In 100 years, nobody will care
Growing old is mandatory, growing up optional.
Murphy's law is always apllicable, unless you depend on it.
Does a poem count? Ozymandias has stuck with me forever.
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."
"The best time to plant a tree is fifty years ago. The second best time is right now" - essentially don't worry about what you could have done better, or what could have been, make now and the future as good as you can
and
"If you don't fall off occasionally, you're not trying hard enough" - originally told to me in the context of learning to windsurf (I still can't windsurf), but applicable in a lot of areas. This doesn't mean try to fall off, it means failure is a natural part of growth, not something to be shunned
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." -Anatole France
When you look at someone through rose colored glasses, the red flags just look like flags.
“What Orwell failed to predict is that we'd buy the cameras ourselves, and that our biggest fear would be that nobody was watching.”
"For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn't conspire against you, but it doesn't go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. 'Someday' is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”
Cannot remember where this is from but I like it enough tosaved it in my notenbook.
“It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri, and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us – but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses.” — Carl Sagan
This one has been my go to for years and years.
It gives me comfort. In that we probably won't every get there, because of our evolutionary failures as a species, but that's ok. Because the next species or evolution of our kind will stand a better chance.
"It's not the first thought that comes to mind that matters, what's important is what you after that"
This was in the context of racism. I was raised in an racist environment, and I was struggling with the awful thoughts that had been indoctrinated in to me bubbling up when I encountered folk that were the target of that racism.
That quote helped me not be hung up on guilt and self flagellation, and instead to focus on being the person I want to be, rather than the person I was taught to be.
"It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society"
"Everyday is somebody's first day." I think of it like a more generous Hanlon's Razor "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Especially when an employee is perhaps not doing a good job or is slow. If it was my first day on the job, I'd like a little consideration.
This one stuck with me and resurfaces in my mind every now and then, particularly nowadays:
"We've arranged a global civilization in which the most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster." ~ Carl Sagan
"Perfect is the enemy of Good."
Never forget, in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table.
"We're getting paid to put paint on the wall."
I was like 17 or so and had a temp job as a housepainter for a couple weeks, and I was sinking time and energy into doing an excellent job and being really efficient with paint and ... kind of missing the forest for the trees. I was putting unnecessary care & excellence into a back wall and the wall was taking longer to prep than the whole-house job could afford. One of the old guys on site pulled me aside me and, in the eloquent terms above, pointed out that ... the real goal here is paint on the wall. We're doing a good job because we take pride in our work, but the outcome is significantly more important than the journey to everyone else. Doing a "good job" can't wind up as an obstacle to the job itself.
I was always a details person and perfectionist, and that one clear lesson about taking a step back from the details of a task to double-check what the actual goal is ... has always stuck with me.
Every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
— Carl Sagan
“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it" - Someone mistranslating Aristotle
Listen
There is only one way to make people talk more than they care to. Listen. Listen with hungry earnest attention to every word. In the intensity of your attention, make little nods of agreement, little sounds of approval. You can’t fake it. You have to really listen. In a posture of gratitude. And it is such a rare and startling experience for them, such a boon to ego, such a gratification of self, to find a genuine listener, that they want to prolong the experience. And the only way to do that is to keep talking. A good listener is far more rare than an adequate lover.
Travis McGee
from Nightmare in Pink
by John D. McDonald
Failure is always an option. - Adam Savage