Ask Lemmy

Not my circus, not my monkeys.

Used this against my controlling mother, who liked to lay BS at my feet and make me think it was my responsibility to fix. When it was HER that caused the whole thing. The look on her face when I hit her with that phrase and just turned around and left was priceless.

There a LOT of things that are just flat not your problem, even if someone else tries to make it yours.

"You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it." Pirkei Avot (2:21)

While I’m not religious, this Jewish quote resonates with me. The “work” is never truly finished, we can all do more to make things better, both for ourselves and our community.

This has influenced my entire idea of spending money:

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

Making fun of the weak (poor, minorities, etc) is easy because they can't fight back, that's why the best comedy is the one that upsets the powerful.

"Let go, or be dragged."

It's simple, yet so meaningful.

If it takes only two minutes, do it right away.

What you do when you don't have to, makes you who you are.

Never do anything you would be afraid to explain to the paramedics.

Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.

How you do anything is how you do everything.

It a saying from Ubuntu (the philosophy not the operating system) “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” in English it’s “I am because you are” It’s a simple and concrete way of saying how we’re not judged by how we treat others but we are who we are through our interactions with others.

Honestly I’ve only browsed through a bit of philosophy and I’m sure I missing a heap but it really struck me.

If the penalty for breaking a law is a fine, that law only exists for poor people.

Seek to understand, then be understood.

"Things in life aren't always quite what they seem, there's more than one given angle to any one given scene. So bear that in mind next time you try to intervene on any one given angle to any one given scene."

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.

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

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Hurt people hurt people.

"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.

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

-Captain Jean-Luc Picard

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

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.

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

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

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

"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.