Even better if you can provide your own understanding of its meaning.
Mine would be :
“Nothing kills a man as much as being forced to represent a country” (and err considering the context, I must stress it has nothing to do with the current US shitshow), by a WW1 soldier, illustrator and writer named Jacques Vaché.
For me it just means being forced into representing a group (national, of course, but maybe also social, racial, sexual, professional, any kind of group) or defining one’s identity only by reference to a group is to be avoided at all costs.
Note : Its not the same, imho, as engaging in a collective struggle or defense against a common oppression.
How about you?
You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago. - Alan Watts
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”
I would be so far ahead of where I am right now if I had just decided on a course and committed instead of analyzing all the choices to death.
I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned.
Richard Feynman
Dad told me when I was young to “learn to drink your coffee black and cold and you’ll never be disappointed.”
I don’t think he was just talking about coffee.
As in have low expectations of everything?
More like be grateful for what you’re given
That’s much more wholesome!
Men are scared that women will laugh at them , women are scared that men will kill them.
It’s a poem by Stephen Crane, but so short I’m often reminded of it in full:
A man said to the universe:
”Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
It sounds nihilistic, but it’s somehow calming whenever I start to feel like I’ve been wronged or I’m owed a break of some sort.
Never tie your identity to something that can be taken away. Re: job title, salary, perceived status. Your self perceived identity should have a much more stable foundation.
I like it. Remember where it’s from?
A former mentor of mine, and I found it rather compelling the more I reflected on the implications.
“Don’t follow people - follow ideas” which seems more relevant today than ever before it seems.
I think there is a quote somewhere from someone that says people talk about people, smarter people talk about facts and even smarter people talk about ideas. I am probably murdering the quote, but it was something like that.
It makes sense though, talking about other people doesn’t really provide much direction in life. Facts do provide more direction in life, but ideas really function as a pointer in a lot of situations when may not know what to do otherwise.
Yeah this quote really pivoted my life to a strong cosmopolitan view. By detaching ideas from people you can pick and choose and design your own philosophy and direction without attachment to exact people or inherited culture.
This is quite liberating mentally as solving cognitive dissonance is very expensive and theres an incredible amount of cognitive dissonance required to follow people who are often flawed or have conflicting ideas attached to them.
I feel like this is most appropriate with politicians. No politician will be everything you want, but if they have a few policies you’re into, they’re worth your vote.
I think it applies outside of politics as well like art and even business.
Totally fair.
Rewatched that recently. I was really surprised how dark it sometimes gets for a kids’ show. It still holds up really well!
"Who I am is where I stand.
Where I stand is where I fall."
-Steven Moffat, Doctor Who
I have a lot of darkness in my head due to my upbringing. I’ll never get it out. That doesn’t stop me from being a good man, because who you are and what you’ll be remembered as isn’t your internal struggle, its what you chose to stand for in practice.
Props to you for actually attributing the quote to the writer and not the character. It’s a pet peeve of mine when people take profound sounding quotes and attribute it to a fictional character that never existed, never had real thoughts or opinions of their own
I agree it’s good to credit a writer, but the attribution should also include the character so the quote has context. For example, I would want there to be a distinction between a comment I made in real life and a line I wrote for a psychotic character to say.
I hadn’t thought of that before, and I can think of several characters who’ve said things I doubt the writers would want attributed to them. I just want to see quotes from fiction being clearly labeled as such, and not using the grandiose of a character’s title to add weight to the quote.
For example when I see people quote Admiral William Adama on how when the military becomes the police, the people become the enemy of the state. That was Ron Moore writing a character for a show set in a post apocalyptic universe where the only survivors are hanging out on military ships, not a real world seasoned officer’s opinion. Is it an interesting point worth discussing? Sure, but I’m not putting it in the same category of 5-Star General Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings about the military industrial complex
I think it’s a very interesting point. The whole concept of how fiction affects us is fascinating to me. Our idea of what it meant to be human used to come entirely from watching real people around us. Now we’re exposed to hundreds of fictional characters, and we get to know some of them better than we know our actual friends. Despite objectively knowing they’re fictional, they still influence our picture of what being a person means, because that’s just how our brains work. I think most modern people have the feeling their own lives aren’t as exciting or interesting or hilarious as they should be.
Thank you! I try to, even though at the end of the day the best you can do is the show runner that signed off on it, as you’ll never really know who invented it in the writer’s room.
It’s always darkest before the dawn.
How I interpret it is that when things get bad, and reach a new level of bad, that could be just what is needed for the pendulum to swing the other way, and swing extra hard.
Kind of like a Great Depression giving labour laws kind of a thing.
Gives me hope.
I got two. First is just Hanlon’s razor; “Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence”
The second one is a bit of a strange pick; its “But there’s no sense crying over every mistake; You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.”
Another version I’ve heard is “When you suspect a conspiracy you often only find incompetence”
I hate Hanlon’s Razor. It’s used as an excuse by and for too many malicious people lately.
Hold on tightly, let go lightly.
The Croupier in Croupier.
It doesn’t come with extra instructions, so it means what I want it to mean and someone else may have it mean something else entirely. For me it means hold on to the important things tightly while they are important and when they aren’t then it is time to let them and other things go.
Don’t carry things that don’t need to be held onto, especially if you can’t control them. I hold onto the memories of my sister both good and bad, I embrace the pain of her not being here anymore when they come, then I let the pain go because I keep ahold of the happiness she brought into people’s lives while she was here.
Hmmm. I’ll try to remember this one, thank you, that’s a real gift.
Fortune favors the bold.
It was written in a graduation card from my grandfather.
“Trust no one - not even yourself”
My dad told me this while going through a divorce. He was also going through a criminal trial due to his deviance.
Its one thing that stuck with me and I wish it didn’t.
Another one is from Lenin: " ‘There Are Decades Where Nothing Happens’ and ‘Weeks Where Decades Happen’ "
The Lenin one has been on my mind for like a year now. We’re coming up on the anniversary of the February revolution and I’m hoping that as things get worse we’ll see the point where we have had enough.
Plenty of big flash points at current. I think we are seeing capitalism in disrepair, similar to 1920 Europe, world powers are rebalancing and competing for the now very limited resources. The working class are taking the brunt of the hardship and seek real change, and when trump can’t make good on those promises we will see a real struggle.
Good luck out there comrade.
