What profound statement has stuck with you over the years?

I used to think of myself as a complete pacifist, but these words haven't left my mind since I heard them:

You think you're better than everyone else, but there you stand: the good man doing nothing. And while evil triumphs and your rigid pacifism crumbles into bloodstained dust, the only victory afforded to you is that you stuck true to your guns.

Of course this only applies to defense, never to offense (especially "preemptive defense"), but I can't really argue against it.

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Hurt people hurt people.

Choose your rut carefully.

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

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

-Captain Jean-Luc Picard

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

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

Loneliness is the tax we have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind

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

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

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

“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.

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.

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.

The world needs fewer cynics and more skeptics.

No matter where you go, there you are.

• Buckaroo Banzai

"Freedom is not a goal, but a tool".

-Reiraku (Downfall) By Inio Asano

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.

I was going to post something cheeky like “Fuck here we go again”, noped out, pressed backspace and then this…

"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.

Yes, for those of us who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their idealism—and their assumption of immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in faith and in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong—and lucky—he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan. Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death—however mutable man may be able to make them—our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

--Stanley Kubrick, responding to the question "If life is so purposeless, do you feel that it’s worth living?" in a 1968 Playboy interview.

Experience is a lantern lightning only it's carrier

“Deep” or “profound” means nothing in research design. If you read it somewhere, see if it defined precisely in this context. If not, see if you can mentally replace it with a more precise word. If not, be skeptical of the validity of the claims.

My Research Design professor

I’m being a bit cheeky but this has actually stuck with me over the years and I do think it’s helpful.

Every person dies alone.

“It can be two things”