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[–] 88 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    I find that this is particularly difficult for conservative, "pull yourself up from your bootstraps" types to understand. Some people think poor people, or those who have fallen into misfortune, were makers of their own tragedy. While it may sometimes be the case, I believe that more often than not, these people were just unlucky enough to born at the wrong place, at the wrong time, into the wrong family, neighbourhood, or country.

    There are poor people inventing incredible things every day, but nobody around them has the power nor connections to make anything out of it. I watched a video of people who made a bike out of wood that could carry half a tonne, down an unpaved road at relatively high speeds, while metal bikes in developed countries have ratings for people under 150kg. But because those poor bike-makers were born where they were and had to toil in order to survive, day in and day out, there was never enough time for them for make their inventions a product to be produced and sold to the masses. Yet somewhere, there's a conservative prick saying these people are lazy or aren't smart.

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  • [–] 55 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    In my language it goes : "Alone you go faster, together you go further".

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    [+] 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)
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    [–] 40 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    "It's not your fault, but it is your problem."

    I honestly love and repeat this line way too much

    Just because you weren't the cause doesn't mean it isn't something you need to worry about/fix. I learned this one from my high school English teacher when a student was late and tried to get out of it by blaming traffic lol. The traffic was not their fault, but it ended up being their problem.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    There’s a variation of this that I like better: “It’s not your fault but it is your responsibility.”

    Framing it this way shifts the tone from passive to active; you have a problem, but you take responsibility. It also helps the responsible party set themself up for correcting the behavior in the future. Saying you’re late because of traffic and accepting the consequences is fine, but recognizing that you need to leave earlier to accommodate traffic is better.

    I had a teacher who would ask for an explanation, not an excuse. If the explanation started to place blame on someone or something else, he’d just shake his head and say “no excuses.”

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it

    Unfortunately, too many people have been trained to reject ideas or thoughts without first thinking them through. Many simply react to whatever word, expression, or concept triggers them without giving the rest a second thought. For example a brilliant idea can be presented online, but if one word is out of place, the usage of that word will debated instead of the idea.

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    [–] 32 points 1 year ago

    "It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life."

    -Captain Jean-Luc Picard

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  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    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

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    [–] 27 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    'Be Kind; Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle'

    Sometimes that grumpy old man really is just having a bad day.

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Almost every horrific thing that humans engage in stems from fear.

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    [–] 22 points 1 year ago

    There's this quote attributed to Rabbi Yisrael Salanter:

    When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.

    Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

    There are two lessons here. First - the best way to affect meaningful change is to start local. Rather than spending a lot of time agonizing over national politics, get involved in your community - your neighborhood, your town, your apartment building, even just the house you share with your family. Your community will take better care of you and the other people that you care about than any national government ever will.

    Second - ultimately the only person whose behavior you can change is your own. Don't be too harsh with other people when they don't behave the way that you believe they should. Be a more stringent judge of your own behavior.

    But temper that with this:

    Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much. Or berate yourself too much either.

    Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

    Baz Lurhmann

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago

    There's this quote early in Good Omens: “It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”

    It's an awkward one these days, but it sounds Pratchett-esque enough to salvage.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Choosing means losing a little, said by a teacher in highschool when I was struggling to decide what to do after I'd graduate, still remember it 12 years later

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    [–] 19 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Just because two sides are fighting doesn't mean one side is good (something along this line)

    ... I don't think it is that profound, but I think about it a lot

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    From "The Good Place": If soulmates do exist, they're not found. They're made.

    I believe Seth MacFarlane said something similar in "The Orville".

    A great reminder from two great shows.

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    [–] 16 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    You can't help people that don't want help.

    Goes for people who are going through mental/physical health problems or substance abuse issues. If they don't want help you have to accept that and be there for them when they do.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    Hurt people hurt people.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    Seriously though:

    A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. — Douglas Adams

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    When my dad was teaching me how to ride a bike, I kept falling.

    He noticed that I was paying so much attention to the road that I couldn't focus on riding the bike.

    Finally he picked me up, looked me dead in the eyes and said, "You rule the road. Don't let the road rule you".

    Somehow that phrase immediately gave me the ability to ride a bicycle.

    I have shared it with other people learning to ride a bicycle after they have fallen down at least once.

    It freaking works.

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    [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    No matter where you go, there you are.

    • Buckaroo Banzai
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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    "Know your worth."

    I've struggled with self-worth my whole life and I'm finally taking a stand for myself both in my professional and personal life. It feels great tbh.

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    [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    “Don’t work yourself out if a job.”

    My pops told me this after I told him how much more work I had been doing than my coworkers, and how fast I got all of my stuff done. This was like 15 years ago. I immediately started pacing myself, and I’ve since been infinitely less stressed at work.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    Bill Nye: "Everyone you'll ever meet knows something you don't"

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    This kind of question always immediately makes me think of something a friend said years ago when I was still a teen. We were talking about school and education and shit and it was on the subject of asking questions when you don't fully understand something and he said "rather ask a stupid question and be a fool for five minutes, then keep your mouth shut and be a fool for the rest of your life." I think it was something that his mother had told him, in their language, so I'm constructing that statement from memory but it was something close to that.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    This can be applied to anything, but the quote as I read it in a book by Piers Anthony (I know, gross, I was in middle school), was:

    Power is a means to an end. Don't let the means become the end.

    I often think of it as:

    Money is a means to an end. Don't let the means become the end.

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  • My Uncle once told me that the most important thing you can learn is where to find more information.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Two quotes/ statements from a book named “The Midnight Library” ;

    • “If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise”.

    • “Never underestimate the big importance of small things”.

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    [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    "Sometimes. at the end of a sentence, I come out with the wrong fusebox. And the thing about saying the wrong word is a] I don't notice it, and b] sometimes orange water given bucket of plaster."

    I think we can all take something away from that.

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    [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    We thought of life by analogy was a journey, was a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end. And the thing was to get to that end.

    Success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you're dead.

    But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played

    -- Alan Watts

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    "The thing about happiness is that you only know you had it when it's gone. I mean, you may think to yourself that you're happy. But you don't really believe it. You focus on the petty bullshit, or the next job, or whatever. It's only looking back by comparison with what comes after that you really understand, that's what happiness felt like."

    -Conrad Kellogg. Fallout 4.

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    [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Housing can't be both affordable and a good investment.

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    [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    What is better: to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?

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    [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    "If it weren't for my horse, I would've never spent that year in college."

    I don't know what it means, but it has changed my life.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    You won't know if you don't ask.

    People fear rejection or embarrassment for asking other people questions but once you realize that it's the most efficient way to navigate life it really helps. Saves you time and energy. Often saves you emotional energy as well in the long run.

    If you like someone just ask them.

    If you want to know where someone got something or learned a skill just ask them.

    Curiosity is important and I feel so many people are so socially anxious that they will just try and Google and Google as opposed to entering into a simple verbal exchange with a stranger or something.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn't, pays it."

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