I have 3 but would LOVE to hear more…
You can always have more but you can’t have less
This one’s from my dad and it really stuck with me. You can, and really should, apply this to any intoxicant.
On the pitch is off the streets
This is about getting restless kids, or kids who might be in a bad situation, into sports.
The axe forgets but the tree remembers
Translation on this one: People who cause hurt are less likely to remember than those it affected.
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Only break one law at a time.
For example; If you have an AI executive tied up in the trunk of your car, make sure the tail lights all work.
My friend refers to this as - Don’t be stupid while you’re being stupid.
Ooh, along this line:
No matter what you do, pay your accountant and attorney first.
HAHAHA. I actually have this one baked into my consciousness. I’m a little more “don’t speed if your tax is out of date” though. Think I need to up my game.
I always say “If your tags are expired, don’t have a body in the trunk!” which I think splits the difference between both examples.
This one was taught almost verbatim to me by a guy who sold a lot of drugs in college and saw a lot of people in the business get bagged. He never did though.
I have several that I live my life by. Being prompted has caused me to forget all of them
I hear that. Sure look, if you think of any of them in a months time I’ll still be glad of the learning.
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.
Haven’t seen it yet.
You can make no mistakes and still lose. That is not failure, that is life. -Picard
Got this one from a fortune cookie. What can I say, if it’s good it’s good.
“Friends are those who, when you’ve made a fool of yourself, don’t think you’ve done a permanent job of it.”
“You do not treat a man like a gentleman because he is. You treat a man like a gentleman because you are.”
Feel like this clashes with “respect is earned, not demanded” which I feel more strongly
Edit: That said, I do also believe that people should be treated with respect by default.
Many (maybe even most?) adages have an opposite.
“Reach for the stars”, but “sky’s the limit”.
“Knowledge is power,” but “ignorance is bliss.”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” but “out of sight, out of mind.”
“Better safe than sorry,” but “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
“The pen is mightier than the sword,” but “actions speak louder than words.”
“Great minds think alike,” but “fools seldom differ.”
“Too many cooks spoil the broth,” but “many hands make light work.”
This is missing a Carlin punchline to it and a message, but I can envision him saying it.
Most of those don’t mean opposite things, though. They aren’t describing incompatible concepts. Even, “great minds think alike” and, “fools seldom differ” are more comments about different contexts than opposite meaning.
Right, and that’s kinda my point. I said that there are opposites, not that they don’t have any value at all. Context is key.
They are literally, technically, definitionally not opposites if they carry unrelated meanings.
I don’t think they all do, but we clearly disagree.
Yes, not all of them are wholly unrelated, as already said. That doesn’t make them all valid opposites.
Not really.
Take the first one. Someone can work hard to improve themselves, but have a realistic idea of how far they can go. Maybe I’ll take a chance and open a hot dog stand of my own; I shouldn’t expect to outdo Burger King or KFC.
You can take risks safely. A scuba diver can explore a cave with a trained buddy and proper equipment, or just swim in alone.
All the people who fought in the Tojan War are long dead, but Homer’s words still live on.
Sky is the limit means nothing is impossible, so they say pretty much the same thing about aiming high.
That one was a bit tongue in cheek, yeah.
Yeah, it’s funny like when people say “Jumbo shrimp is an oxymoron.” Like, ha ha, yeah, shrimp can also mean small person, but the animals called shrimp come in different sizes, so we need size words if we want to classify them. So it’s not in fact a contradiction, but it’s a really funny joke. Same thing here.
I think that there’s a fundamental disconnect between respect for somebody, and how you treat them. How you treat them reveals everything about you, and not much about them. For example, ICE goons don’t respect the immigrants that they see as breaking the law. But their, unhinged, gleeful violence comes from within their own disordered brains. We can’t tell anything at all about the people ICE targets by the fact that agents abuse them, but we can be 100% sure that the agents are psychopathic shitheels. “Respect” depends on your point of view, while behavior is tangible.
Put another way, nobody can make you behave a certain way, and if somebody doesn’t earn your respect, set a boundary and remove them from your life. Don’t pretend that others force you to behave a certain way.
Respect is earned, but all people deserve to be treated with decency by default.
You’re 100% right.
You can be disrespectful as fuck in a gentlemanly way. That shit is better than heroin to people with generational wealth.
Initial respect or friendliness should be the default behaviour until proven otherwise.
This one is stellar.
It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you realize there is a way to solve problems without using violence.
This reminds of “To a hammer every problem looks like a nail.”
Please do not nail or hammer your testicles. And above all else, don’t google that.
Unfortunately I am familiar with the pain Olympics.
“Never let perfect get in the way of good enough.”
If you wait on the “perfect” time to do something, or the “perfect” opportunity, you may find it never comes. Make the most of what’s in front of you.
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people don’t remember what you say or do nearly as much as they remember the way that you make them feel.
thanks turd burglar
“The graveyard is filled with people who had the right of way”
“I’ve always enjoyed an advantage over people who don’t read the instructions.” -My Dad.
Folks, life doesn’t always come with instructions, but when it does… read them.
In short: Don’t worry about it.
In long: If you have a problem, you can either do something about it or you can’t. If you can do something about it, do that thing instead of worrying. If you can’t, worrying just gives you an additional problem.
Essentially what you said, but I’d like to phrase it the way a counselor said it to me when I was under a lot of stress at work. Stress is the gap between our expectation and reality. Say you expect to be/produce/achieve/whatever 100%, but you are only capable of achieving 80%. The stress you experience is that 20% gap. Change your expectations to meet your reality and that stress will be resolved.
Now, it may still be that others might still want or expect that 20% from you, but that’s their problem and their stress. If you cannot produce it anyway (which created your stress in the first place), existing in the stress-gap clearly won’t make you able to do it anyway.
This is essentially the Serenity prayer as used in 12-step programs:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.
That’s stoicism in a nutshell. That and amor fati.
This is a bit of a trap, because it kind of breeds anxiety.
Most people who are worried are aware that logically, it is unhelpful. You can phrase it however you like but if someone could stop worrying, they would.
Human’s are hard wired to “worry” about threats. It’s how your ancestors avoided being eaten by a sabre toothed tiger long enough to be someone’s ancestor. Worry is in our nature.
As you accrue things you’re not worrying about, and as you don’t worry about them over time, it can create extraordinary tension which in my case and many others presents as anxiety - an overwhelming and unreasonable response to a threat.
So for loads of people, trying not to worry kinda works until it doesn’t.
There’s loads of healthier ways to manage worry and anxiety, that I won’t try to summarise here, but ACT and CBT are good places to start.
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
Wow. These are really good.
Feynman’s quote goes HARD. full on 1 sentence diss track to authoritarianism!
Yes, including the authoritarianism of social intimidation.
There’s a saying in Chinese. It rhymes in Chinese (which makes it so much cooler) but the translated version is this:
Given equivalent units of gold and time, it is easy to trade time for gold, but it is challenging to trade gold for time.
Essentially, be wary of how much you’re devoting to your work, because it doesn’t matter how successful you are, you will never get your life back
There’s another one that I find to be very relevant with the times:
a boat with naturally straighten itself when it nears a bridge
It’s a descriptivist version of the English saying “we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” Essentially, problems have a way of sorting themselves out when things get desperate enough
Time is the only commodity that you can’t make more it. Make sure you spend it well.
Love these.
Just want to clarify that “we’ll cross that bridge when we get there” is closer to “work on one problem at a time” than implying the problem will sort itself out.
Isn’t that what I meant? English saying is a prescriptivist version of the Chinese song; Chinese saying is a descriptivist version of the English saying
To be clear, the Chinese saying isn’t implying that the problem will naturally go away. It’s implying that people will be driven to solve the problem as the deadline approaches
Love both of these. Thank you!
Perfection is the enemy of progress
I heard it as, “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Ironically, I heard it from a friend who lived his life striving for perfect, and died of a treatable medical condition because his wife’s HMO wasn’t good enough for him.
We say “perfect is the enemy of good.” Even simpler.
