For me it was these.
“A focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius”
“Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter”
These two quotes really helped get my @** in gear.
Two things, actually. “You are fired”, and “You are hired”. Also, does “I do” count?
“Gentoo can be easy or hard, depending on how you look at it”
Now I really need to hear how you look at it…
I just assume it’s easy with instructions. It’s turned out well till now
check out Funtoo, instead of Gentoo:
it’s the guy who began Gentoo, doing an improved version.
I’ve heard about Funtoo, will try it out
The mind is the athlete.
“Do what you can, where you are, with what you’ve got.” - Teddy Roosevelt
“There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” - Leonard Cohen
“Perfect is the enemy of good.” - unknown
“Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” - Yoda
If we could understand but a flower it could change our life.
As someone with anxiety: “the best way out is always through” - Robert Frost
“If you’re going thru hell, keep going”
“I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops”
-Stephen Jay Gould
Yeah just imagine if Isaac Newton was born as a sl***e rather than a rich estate owner. We would still be stuck in the dark ages.
Well not really. That is great man theory bs.
Newton did not “invent” gravity, it is an immutable law of the universe, no more did Marx “invent” socialism or the labor theory of value.
In both cases they observed actions and reactions that were testable and quantifiable and in both cases they were not the only ones to reach the same conclusions.
If anything the Gould quote is saying the opposite. That having so many people confined and coerced into such labors for the sole purpose of maximizing profits for a single individual, we are robbing ourselves of many great minds.
Were you spelling slave and misspelled it or am I missing something?
Newton was a total slute don’t let the virgin propagandists win.
We’re in the process of declaring some words unsayable in order to massively amplify their power as offensive slurs. It’s going great so far, though sl**e still has some distance to go.
Sorry, you’re trying to turn slave into an unsayable slur? What the actual fuck, is this some kind of right wing psyop to nullifying discussions of historical and modern slavery, or just USian libshit racism that equates black skin and slavery?
I think they’re joking.
I hope you’re right, but I’ve seen a bunch of this “slavery is for African Americans” rhetoric recently and I’m not sure if it’s ignorance or maliciousness.
I was absolutely joking, but in hindsight I can see that’s not clear.
There are a number of words that are being declared in some quarters to be so offensive they may not even be uttered, like “faggot” which I have been chastised for even uttering in quotation, and informed I must call “the f-slur”.
My take on this is it is giving power to these words they would not otherwise have and is deeply regressive. We should follow the example of “queer”, which used to be used in highly offensive ways but in recent years has been adopted and claimed by the queer community and has been stripped of much of its power.
I was trying to poke fun at the idiot who is trying to give “slave” new power to offend, but obviously I didn’t do it well.
“The first thing that jumps to your mind isn’t always what you truly think. Sometimes, it’s just what you’ve been trained to think. What matters, is what you do next”
I grew up in a really racist, queerphobic environment, and that comment really helped me by letting me give myself space to undo the bigoted indoctrination I had been taught, without getting trapped in guilt and self disgust whenever one of the racist or bigoted things I was raised with jumped in to my mind.
It let me recognise the bigoted thought as something I was trained to think, rather than being what I actually believe, and by recognising it, I could disempower the thought, and start to unlearn it
That’s a powerful thought.
Conditioning significantly influences our psyche.
These thoughts that are the result of conditioning are like knee jerk reactions.
Our brain is designed to conserve energy so it actually prioritises conditioned knee jerk reactions rather than introspective thoughts.
One needs significant amount of training to bypass this process.
Similarly if you shit talk yourself in your head to motivate yourself it really will eventually start to condition you that way even if it does motivate you
“In the corporate world, nobody has any compassion, ever.” - A friend told me as I was about to take my first real job. Brutal and maybe exaggerated, but exactly what I needed to manage my own expectations.
A Corporation is:
- an incorporated “person”, that
- is legally-obliged to be psychotic, narcissistic, machiavellian, sociopathic-psychopathic, and short-termist/nihilist, using all the systemic-dishonesty that it can, for gain
- the only dimension of the DarkHexad that it isn’t obliged to be, is sadistic… that’s optional.
- it cannot ever be put in prison, because it’s a herd, not an individual: it can dissipate, but it cannot die, or be forced to experience karma: only individuals can be truly-accountable.
( DarkHexad:
- narcissistic
- machiavellian
- sociopathic-psychopathic
- nihilist
- sadist
- systemic-dishonesty )
( all this to say that the legalistically-enacted-treason of granting “personhood” to corporations killed strategic-viability for all countries, and the highjacking-of-the-world’s-economy AND the world’s-governments, by corporations, is global unfolding proof.
What should have happened, is a separate category of pseudopersons should have been created, with systematically-limited rights, including prohibiting the things from interfering in elections,
but that would have required some real integrity & spine… )
( finally, for anybody so young/naive as to believe that charities are inherently-good, go volunteer in the management of one for a few years, & then see how you view integrity… )
“Excellence is not an act, but a habit” - Aristotle teaching that good comes from the whole, not from a single step. Focus on the whole, and the steps will follow.
“So, what’s the next action for this?” - the GTD approach to task management teaching me to be specific and then go do it (or plan it, or delegate it). This really kicks me into productivity mode.
“You cannot love someone else until you love yourself.”
My dad raised me on this. If don’t see yourself worthy of love from even yourself, you’ll never be able to accept it from someone else. Healthy love is mutual. Also, this ties back into the idea that if you don’t see yourself worthy of love, it means you need to work on yourself until you do rather than trying to fill that gap with someone else.
Similarly. You cannot forgive yourself until your forgive your transgressor. Pent up anger is no god for your health.
I found that same nugget just under a decade ago. Dropped off the dating scene to work on myself. It really made me reflect. I’m still working on myself and honestly I suspect I will be for a while to come.
Reminds me of 28 Days.
I did not kill this plant, it was sick or something. I gave it everything. I was talking to it, telling it stories. I drew a sketch of it, and put it on my refrigerator.
Did you water it?
I killed the plant.
It took me over 6 years after my first serious relationship to really start figuring myself out and getting in tune with who I really was. I’m definitely still on the path and I realize more and more why my last relationship ended. It really was the best thing for me at the time.
When I first came across that wisdom I realized my desire in a relationship was to just pour myself into the other person, basically worship them. But not for their benefit, but to distract myself from myself. It’s fairly easy to see how that goes wrong.
I’m still learning, and I’ve found even more stuff I need to work on, but either I get there or I don’t, what matters if I never stopped trying.
My favourite is:
If you’re scared to spell out a scary, bad word, find another word to use instead of trying to hide it behind similar characters.
When I was 16 I had my first job at a shitty fast food restaurant, and on the first day my manager told me, "The difference between a good job and a great one is often just a couple minutes "
20 years later It still pops into my head whenever I’m working on a project, or work task, or even just stuff around the house. Usually it’s right when I’m about to quit or give up and call it “good enough”. And for the most part, I’ve found it to be true.
“Erfahrung heißt gar nichts. Man kann seine Sache auch 35 Jahre lang schlecht machen.” - Kurt Tucholsky
Which DeepL translates to
“Experience means nothing. You can do a bad job for 35 years.”
Not strictly life changing, but a very valuable reminder, if you need to deal with ‘that’ kind of person.
This and the difference between decades of experience and experience that’s decades old.
Sometimes a person that’s 30 years in a field or profession just managed to avoid getting fired for 30 years.
The big lez show. It a comedy on youtube that you can watch now for free. It’s one of, if not the, best series I’ve watched and, although strange at times, is unbelievable deep. Specifically, what stuck with me was as when lez, the main character, asks sassy, his friend, how he’s supposed to achieve his dreams and be happy in a world that’s fucked up, and sassy tells him, “what’s the first thing anyone does to start they’re day? You wake up.”
