"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."
- Picard
Here are a few nice ones, I can't really pick:
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” - John Maynard Keynes
(You can also apply this one to proprietary software vs. Free software (don't say open source in my presence))
“The tyrants are only great because we are on our knees.” - Étienne de La Boétie
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” - Rosa Luxemburg
Free software tells you "do whatever you want, you're free" but open source completely misses the point: it means you can read the code, but not necessarily recompile, modify and redistribute. Plus the term was invented for the confusion that would come from it. For example, a lot of AI models like LLM's claim they are "open-source", which basically means nothing: it's far easier to say that than to claim it's a free model, because that would imply freedoms to modify, reuse, redistribute the training data, weight etc. (no AI model allows that for now, and there will probably never be one that does).
"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."
- Ernest Hemingway (though I'll admit, I first heard it in Kingsman)
You're not fronting having read all Hemingway, you're sharing a quote with everyone. It's fine if you heard it in Kingsman, just as it would have been fine if you had heard it in some other work of fiction that quotes Hemingway.
I like this one, it really says don't measure yourself against others
“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, direct, easy to understand and wrong.“
- Paraphrased H.L Mencken“To study religion is merely to know the mind of man, but if one truely wanted to know the mind of God, you must study physics.”
- Iain Banks“I believe that children are our future. Unless we stop them now.”
- Homer SimpsonWe do not inherit the world from our ansestors, we borrow it from our children. -Antoine de Saint Exupéry
“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”
- Nelson Mandela
I struggle with this one a lot, I definitely have a lot of resentment built up as I've grown up. But holding all in just makes my life worse, it only hurts me. It is mental prison of sorts. I think there's another Mandela quote that states exactly that as well.
It took me a long time to realize that I'm not forgiving the people I forgive because they deserve it. I'm forgiving them because I need the problem to be over.
I think of that quote often as well but now I'm seeing it differently than before.
I interpreted it as advice to merely let resentment go but it could just as easily instead be to orient those feelings of resentment towards actually resolving what led to them in the first place.
Not just reflection but practice besides.
Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. - Mark Twain
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” ― Steven Weinberg
I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.
Kurt Vonnegut
"I ship is safest in harbour, but that's not what ships are for."
"When people turn to you when shit goes wrong. That's when you're a man."
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)
There are tons of quotes I like. Below are some of my favorites.
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. - The Brothers Karamazov (book) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I don't want to live someone else's idea of how to live. Don't ask me to do that. I don't want to find out one day that I'm at the end of someone else's life. - Out of Africa (movie) by Sydney Pollack
Someone once told me the definition of hell; on your last day on earth, the person you could have become will meet the person you became. - Anonymous
"The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry."
"Gentlemen, I don’t know whether we are going to make history tomorrow, but at any rate we shall change geography"
General Sir Charles Harrington
Just before one of the largest non-nuclear explosions was detonated.
