
Ask HN: What are your favorite sayings? - tmaly
Do you have any favorite sayings or quotes that you live by?<p>My father use to say &quot;You do not always have to know the answer, just understand the question&quot;<p>The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - Blade Runner
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yolesaber
My father did quite well for himself early in my life. He started out selling
car alarms and then found himself in a different sales business but it really
took off. When I was 9 we moved from the modest and kinda rundown yet
nonetheless charming ranch house in a subdivision to a massive mansion on the
cliffs overlooking the ocean thirty minutes away from all my former friends
and family (in an area where a car was necessary). We had a private beach. I
had my own duplex room in a turret with a wraparound view. And yet we moved
out of there three years later because we were all unhappy and missed our old
friends and just a simpler life.

I talked to my dad about this a few years later, asking if he had any regrets
or reservations about giving up on his dream of a beachside mansion (Something
he had talked about for as long I can remember). I'll never forget what he
said to me then and I oft remind myself of it. He said to me,

"Sometimes our dreams are the wrong dreams."

~~~
Nors
Thanks for sharing this. I'm currently struggling with life decisions that
stem from conflicts between pursuing long term dreams that have become
achievable versus the real value of actually achieving them.

~~~
max_
>"Action expresses priorities." Gandhi

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csallen
"Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other."
\--Benjamin Franklin

Basically, he's saying that while learning from your own mistakes is
impactful, it's smarter to read/watch/listen so you can learn from others'
mistakes instead. I think it's one of the wisest sayings, because people who
haven't internalized this lesson are largely incapable of heeding any other
advice anyway.

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orky56
"It is better to be hated for what you are then to be loved for what you are
not." Andrew Gide "People think it is holding on that makes you stronger, but
sometimes it's letting go." Herman Hesse "Action expresses priorities." Gandhi

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japhyr
Work hard. Be strong. Don't complain.

I was climbing in the desert with a friend once, and we headed out to a Thai
restaurant in a small town for dinner afterwards. He reached for his wallet
after dinner and a small paper with those words on it fell onto the table. I
asked him about it, and he said that was the advice his grandfather always
gave him. Those words are now posted on my classroom door.

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osullivj
"Consistency is the virtue of a narrow mind" (Emerson; my take - new evidence
requires new thinking). "No entity without identity" (Quine). "Listen to the
system" (me, when debugging & reminding self to actually read error msgs
instead of making assumptions). "No good deed goes unpunished" (trad, but my
take on corporate politics). "Res ipsa loquitor" (Hunter S Thompson; the thing
speaks for itself). "Nimium non sufficaret" (me on a pub crawl - too much is
not enough!)...

~~~
orky56
In the book Santaram by Gregory David Roberts there's a quote that provides a
different perspective to "No good deed goes unpunished". It says "Every
virtuous act has some Dark secret in its heart; every risk we take contains a
mystery that can’t be solved."

~~~
osullivj
Nice angle. Yes - motivations, consequences and the apparent and underlying
connections between them often confound. Especially if you take things at face
value!

~~~
orky56
Many religions/philosophies advocate service and virtuous acts as the path to
happiness. However the underlying need for happiness exposes ego on some level
creating an uneven foundation no matter what. Thanks for sharing!

~~~
bbcbasic
Humans eh? So selfish.

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GFischer
_I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to
gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right._

Cato the Elder

I like this quote because it reminds me not to argue needlesly.

See yesterday's submission:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12483952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12483952)
and

and this quote from Dale Carnegie:

 _Why prove to a man he is wrong? Is that going to make him like you? Why not
let him save face? He didn 't ask for your opinion. He didn't want it. Why
argue with him? You can't win an argument, because if you lose, you lose it;
and if you win it, you lose it. Why? You will feel fine. But what about him?
You have made him feel inferior, you hurt his pride, insult his intelligence,
his judgment, and his self-respect, and he'll resent your triumph. That will
make him strike back, but it will never make him want to change his mind. A
man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still._ \--Dale Carnegie

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wmeredith
There aren't many right or wrong decisions in life. You make a decision and
then work really hard ensuring it was the right one.

-My Mom

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grif-fin
"Let us not be afraid of vision and hope. It was the daring of visionaries
that has brought us this far — from gloomy primordial marshes to where we are
today — reaching for the galaxies, reaching for immortality." F.M 2030 - Up-
Wingers

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hvass
"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the
way." Marcus Aurelius (from his Meditations)

~~~
Mendenhall
I enjoyed his meditations. If you have never read "Art of worldly wisdom" I
think you would enjoy. Short maxims like Marcus and its free on google books.

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dhruvkar
_A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and
his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and
his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision
of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine
whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing
both._ \- François-René de Chateaubriand

I think that the so-called "work/life balance" is different for different
people at different stages of life. This quote reminds me to pursue my vision
of excellence as guided by my stage in life.

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AnimalMuppet
They thought a king would make them free. - Terry Pratchett

I'm not afraid of failure; I'm afraid of succeeding at things that don't
matter. - William Carey

You can pick your sins, but you can't pick the consequences. - Darryl
Strawberry

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rajeshmr
"Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live." \- Jim Rohn

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NumberCruncher
To forgive and forget means to throw away dearly bought experiences. /Arthur
Schopenhauer/

People change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves [...] are
deceiving themselves, because they afterwards find by experience they have
gone from bad to worse. /Machiavelli/

Every shitty product finds its shitty consumer. /my dad/

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rayalez
“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's
impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of
ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things,
not the strength to suffer.”

― Niccolò Machiavelli

“To hell with your cancer. I’ve been living with cancer for the better part of
a year. Right from the start, it’s a death sentence. That’s what they keep
telling me. Well, guess what? Every life comes with a death sentence. So every
few months I come in here for my regular scan, knowing full well that one of
these times – hell, maybe even today – I’m gonna hear some bad news. But until
then, who’s in charge? Me. That’s how I live my life.”

– Walter White

“You ask me if an ordinary person by studying hard would get to be able to
imagine these things like I imagine. Of course! I _was_ an ordinary person who
studied hard. There is no miracle people."

– Richard Feynman

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saturdayplace
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. -
Aristotle

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fern12
If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are
living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the moment. -Lao
Tzu

Forget injuries, never forget kindness. -Confucius

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and
has lost something. —H. Jackson Brown Jr.

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the
opportunity in every difficulty. —Winston Churchill

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. —Stephen Hawking

The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.
—Mulan

I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying. —Michael Jordan

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mbrock
"When there is unclarity in the immediate situation it is generally because
the opinionated mind is grasping and rejecting." — Zen Master Foyan

"Just do what's in front of your nose." — Henry Miller

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7402
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

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rajeshmr
"Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last.
The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed." \- Wayne Dyer

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Nicholas_C
"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."

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ch215
The opening of the _Dhammapada_ sticks in my mind: "All that we are is the
result of what we have thought."

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personlurking
Simple, but...

Energy flows where attention goes

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pasbesoin
TANSTAAFL

