Ask HN: You favorite (not so popular) quote? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: You favorite (not so popular) quote?

15 pointsartembugara36 comments

Mine is "Work Like Hell and Advertise" from Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It took me more than a year to realize its power.

One of these days I have to memorize this by heart:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Robert A. Heinlein

I don't know why, but I was quite moved by this quote. Now off to write a sonnet.

"Experience is what you get, when you don't get what you want"

The only place I heard it is Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture"

"The key point here is our programmers are Googlers, they’re not researchers. They’re typically, fairly young, fresh out of school, probably learned Java, maybe learned C or C++, probably learned Python. They’re not capable of understanding a brilliant language but we want to use them to build good software. So, the language that we give them has to be easy for them to understand and easy to adopt." – Rob Pike

We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. Advancing science has now discovered that all the known cases of biological extinction have been caused by overspecialization, whose concentration of only selected genes sacrifices general adaptability. Thus the specialist’s brief for pinpointing brevity is dubious. In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual’s leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others. Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which in turn leads to war.

-Buckminster Fuller

I like this quote because it helps me to cope with difficult problems. "Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge, wish for more wisdom." from Jim Rohn

I have a few. Most are arabic, denoted with an asterisk.

Capture knowledge with writing.*

Say what you mean, mean what you say.

"The excuse was worse than the crime"*

He went (unnecessarily) far for pasture.*

He has been drinking from a sick goat.*

She accused me of her own sickness, and then went fast away.*

Eat him for breakfast, before he eats you for lunch.*

Eating lentils outside your home tastes better than eating chicken at home. (Pakistan)

"The eye of a parrot", meaning cannot be trusted. (Pakistan)

"Between the hammer and anvil", ie in a tough spot*

There are so many more but these are the ones that come to mind rn.

"There is 10 men. Then there is 11 common sense." don't remember who said :)

It is translated from my language. So it may sound weird to native speaker.

"People buy expensive things to feel valuable. Lead a life where ordinary things gain value when you use it." Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

Recalling from memory. May have errors. He said giving examples of Rev. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi etc. We now have museums of them containing mundane things of their daily life.

"Well stolen is half done".

Purportedly an ancient Spanish proverb.

In the context of where I heard it (the book Working Knowledge) it was described as corresponding to the idea that, when it comes to knowledge, usefulness is more important than originality. Or, in other words, something like the opposite of "Not invented here."

https://books.google.com/books?id=-4-7vmCVG5cC&pg=PA53&lpg=P...

"I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong."

I don't remember where I read or heard this one.

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

You have to regard yourself as a cloud, you see, because clouds never make mistakes...have you ever seen a misshapen cloud? Or a badly designed wave? Whatever you do it'll all come out in the wash some way or another. ~ Alan Watts

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned.

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."

Marcus Aurelius

If you can’t do something about it, then don’t worry about it. If you can do something, then do, and don’t worry about it.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

My favourite spanish proverb: Si tu mujer quiere tirarte de un tejado, procura que sea uno bajo. If your wife wants to throw you off a roof, make sure it's a low roof.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

Oscar Wilde

Better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.- Sun Tzu

Everything will be okay In the end. If it not, it isn't the end.

The harder I work, the more luck I have

Luck is where opportunity meets preparedness

You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.

Robert M. Pirsig

"Can't is the won't of the people who don't"

remember getting told this as a kid by my mum or grandma. Didn't seem to stick though...

"You shouldn't tolerate too well any injustice that does not target yourself" (freely translated from Norwegian) - Arnulf Øverland

When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.

"by people that were no smarter than you"

You say that, but I don't think you know me.

"Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do." - Jack London

"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." - Stephen Covey

Make the best choice given the information you have you never have to regret a decision.

I should count my blessings, but I like complaining better. - Beth Daranciang

"A man's got to know his limitations"

Happiness is doing more and expecting less.

What one man can do, another man can do.

Happiness is a choice

Pursue whats meaningful, not what is expedient. -Jordan Peterson

Helps me to keep asking, what and how should i do and approach.

>When we build, let us think that we build for ever.

By John Ruskin

Apparently not popular in modern capitalism.

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