Ask Lemmy

If someone is unfairly criticizing someone or a group of people it is only because they feel inadequate in some way.

"Nothing good lasts, nothing bad lasts. The only constant is change."

We think we are approaching death gradually, and will die one day. That's not true. We are dying every single day, every single minute. The time in our life that has already passed, now belongs to death.... It's not that our life is short, it's just that we waste a lot of it.... We may leave this life this very moment, let that decide how we will go about with our stuff today.

• Seneca / Marcus Aurelius

After everything is said and done, there’s a lot more said than done.

Most people will talk about doing something rather than doing it.

This.

Don't name your gods.

If not me, then who? If not now, then when?

...as an adult, you realize that much of the time, no one is going to come save you.

Never agree to do something next week you wouldn't do now

I cannot for the life of me remember where/who I heard it from, but I do remember hearing soemone say "Respect is earned, not given" and I agree so much with it.

I'm the type of person who will give you a baseline amount of respect, but it's very much so on a slippery scale. One wrong or right move can change completely how I view you and evaluate our relationship.

people don’t remember what you say or do nearly as much as they remember the way that you make them feel.

never carry what you can roll, never roll what you can leave.

back saving advice from an old stagehand.

Don't let school get in the way of your education

It doesn't TAKE all kinds, we just HAVE all kinds.

Nature bats last.

The earth isn't dying, it is being killed, and those killing it have names and addresses.

The one that stuck with me the most was one I heard a long time ago:

You will know the pain of discipline, or the pain of regret.

Unfortunately, I never became disciplined, but now that I'm old and full of regrets at least I know it was right.

How can you expect great things if you don't take any risks?

All organizations are a hirearchy to benefit the people on their top.

Both from the webnovel "Reverend Insanity." Protagonist was kind of an edgy murder-hobo at times, but I really needed to hear both these quotes from a random fantasy book in highschool.

This will be an odd one. I get a lot of anxiety. But as twisted as it is, one of my mentors said to me:

Relax, no one is shooting at you.

Keep moving forward.

It's from the movies Meet the Robinsons and Rocky Balboa (2006)

Some people only speak one language.

A few from the file I keep:

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. - Jan van de Snepscheut

I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned. - Richard Feynman

Give a man a mask and he'll show you his true face. - Oscar Wilde (paraphrased)

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. - C.S. Lewis

Magic is science you can’t explain. Science is magic you can. - My Daughter

You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago. - Alan Watts

What you do to achieve your goals must never become more important than the goals themselves. - Anonymous

Niether a borrower nor a lender be.

The days are long but the years are short.

"The graveyard is filled with people who had the right of way"

Haven't seen it yet.

You can make no mistakes and still lose. That is not failure, that is life. -Picard

I think it's a good phrase? My mom said it a lot when I was young, but as I've grown it's started to sound like passive aggressive negging?

You should always have friends smarter than you.

Which I always tried to do, but in practice I was seeking out to be tge dumbest person in any given room. Now as an adult I have severe anexity, I wonder if this was a factor.

Open to thoughts on this.

I can tell you one that is super applicable to the current era:

Garbage in, garbage out.

It's a 1980s programmer's adage in response to the belief by business owners that computers could solve their problems without data, or with limited data, or with inaccurate data.

Cut to the era of LLMs in which we're asking glorified autocomplete to answer deep, philosophical or religious questions, or complicated political questions or complex logical dilemmas, when they were trained on Reddit and 4Chan.

There's a 1970s corollary;

The computer is always right.

This is from the tendency of clerks and bureaucrats to, when confronted with conflicts between reality and the data fields in a computer database, favor what the magic box says.

Again, we're seeing magical box thinking in the present day.

Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it

Better safe than sorry

Waste not, want not

Don't put it down, put it away

Your brain is only as long as your pencil

*If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging"

If you find yourself in a bad place, don't make it worse.

The graveyard is full of irreplaceable people.

No one is really irreplaceable

I've always liked the catch-all "Don't be shit. This means you!"

Also: "You can add salt, but never remove salt."

Also: "Before you speak, ask yourself what you want to achieve when you speak."

Also: "You can't control what happens to you, only how you react to it."

"This too shall pass"

For the people suffering in the world

Unless they paying your bills, pay them bitches no mind. Rupaul Charles

moment of bliss can ruin your life. it sounds much better in original language but idea translates well.

You can never go home again.

The act of leaving means you and possibly your home and the people around it are now divergent. It loses the familiarity that made it comfortable.

Nobody gets out of life alive, life is a terminal condition.

Just setting expectations. Hopefully the realization that you only get one go at it, so try to live while you can.

Spare the rod, spoil the child.

I remember this because so many use it as a validation of punishment - the allusion to beating the child with a stick. What it means is to guide a child like a shepherd guides a flock using a crook or whatever. Teach and guide a child so they grow up well.

Everyone can be jealous of what you got, but nobody is jealous of how hou got it

Pretty self explanatory.

Youth is wasted on the young.

Just a tired old truism that young people just don’t appreciate what they have. Either health, time, looks, whatever. It’s true. They can’t. It’s like not appreciating breathing until you have a bad cold and realize the value of not having a plugged up nose.

"Do not ask for a lighter load, but wider shoulders." -on trials and tribulations.

"Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about." -on compassion and perspective.

"It takes pressure to make diamonds." -on appreciating adversity.

"You can either laugh or cry. Take your pick." -on the absurdities of life.

"You can never go home again" -on impermanence. Not in the literal sense of never being able to physically go home, but rather that specific time and place in life that can't be returned to.

"You are the captain of your ship." -on taking command of your life.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever