"Give me the strength to change the things I can change. And the wisdom to recognize them."

"Discussing anything with an IT nerd; you will come to realize its like wrestling with pigs in the mud. They like it."

Friendship is when silence between two people is comfortable.

Big fan of

"The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth"

• Garry Kasparov (2015)

That is to say, don't let them shut you up.

There is a longer, more historical version of this but it escapes me at the moment.

I can only find the Hannah Arendt quote (1974)

"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And [to] such a people... you can do whatever you want."

But i swear there was one that finished "When the truth is silent, liars can move onto action"

Never pass up the opportunity to pee.

And

If a restaurant serves breakfast all day, that's what you should order.

--My dad

Also,

Dont cheap out on anything that keeps you off the ground. (Tires, shoes, mattress etc)

“Never argue with an idiot because the best possible outcome is that you’ll win an argument with an idiot”

I also like “there are some things in life you can’t change, so you shouldn’t worry about them, and there are some things in life you can change, so you shouldn’t worry about them”

“A Splendid Torch” by George Bernard Shaw

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

"You can make anything idiot proof, the world will just make a bigger idiot"

This one speaks directly to me: "The only decision you should make while angry is to stop being angry." ~ Timothy Zahn, the Icarus series.

"People, what a bunch of bastards".

- Roy from the IT Crowd.

Never make yourself a priority to someone that treats you like an option.

"Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners."

Might not agree with Lenin on everything but this one is right on spot.

Oh, my second favorite quote is also from him I had no idea

"One cannot live in society and be free from society."

That's a round down range, can't pull it back

"Sometimes, at the end of a sentence, I come out with completely the wrong fusebox. The problem with using the wrong words is a. that I don't always notice, and b. orange water gibbon bucket of plaster."

I think of this often and have to say we can all learn something from it.

[Note to add: it's a throwaway line from Monty Python sketch. Second note to add: TheWrongFusebox was my reddit username for 15 or so years.]

A couple from a co-worker:

If you don't have time to do it correctly now, what makes you think you will have time to fix it later.

Remember, you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.

And a couple from my grandmother:

Don't study drunk, but if you do at least be a little tipsy when you take the test.

Don't do anything to your car to make it stand it to the police.

Here's a few from my time in the service:

"An okay plan applied immediately and vigorously is way better than a perfect plan ten minutes too late."

"Are you willing to do it? No? Then don't ask your troops to do it."

"In the event that signals can neither be seen nor clearly understood, no Captain can do very wrong if he puts his ship alongside that of an enemy."

Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. the goods we possess are not ours, but theirs.

• St John Chrysostom

The demands of justice must be satisfied first of all; that which is already due in justice is not to be offered as a gift of charity.

• Second Council of the Vatican

When we attend to the needs of those in want, we give them what is theirs, not ours. More than performing works of mercy, we are paying a debt of justice.

• Pope St Gregory

Three quotes referenced in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and just one example of the dissonance between many “Christians” in the U.S. and the faith they purport to follow.

If that doesn’t get them, the fact that the concept of social justice, as in the actual coining of the term as well as the movement against capitalist exploitation brought on by the Industrial Revolution was by the Catholics does lol

The meaning behind it all is very simple, we’re all in this together, and the gifts given to us by God/nature belong to all of us. They’re not for us to hoard, or to exploit others for.

•"You are what you consume" •"Surround yourself and be around people who you want to be like" •"Behave with others just like you want to be behaved with"

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

• The Summer Day, Mary Oliver

It can apply in so many instances.

Not sure it's a quote from anywhere in particular but

"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” Carl Sagan

also

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

― Robert A. Heinlein

Don't be a cunt!

“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough”

“Comparison is the thief of joy”

Rationality is not a character trait, it's a process. If you fool yourself into believing that you're rational by default, you open yourself up to the most irrational thinking.

Two of my favorite are from Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

"What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well."

"We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." (Also attributed as a Native American proverb)

“Give everything you can, but never anything you need.”

I try to live by this. I give away every extra dollar, and help people every chance I get

Hope for the best; prepare for the worst.

Being neurodivergent, this is the most efficient way to mentally deal with change (i fucking hate change even though its the only constant in life)

If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

This quote from LBJ centres me. Its been the conservative tactic for literally decades, from African Americans, to lgbtq+, to immigrants; it's always been the same grift:

• Choose your marginalised group-du-jour.
• Convince a whole lot of stupid people that that group is the cause of all their problems.
• Profit.

Its honestly astonishing how blatant it really is.

"The impediment to action advances action. What's in the way becomes the way."

This is basically saying that anything that gets in the way of you solving a problem becomes the new problem to solve.

"The tool works at both ends."

This is about skill building and practice. Making cool stuff improves you as a result.

Something I like about each is that they work in reverse. No impediment in your way? You're probably not going to have very focused forward movement. No need to use tools (literally or metaphorically)? You won't become more skilled.

It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.

• Jean-Luc Picard. In Star trek: The Next Generation s2e21