If indecisive, choose one of your top favorites. And by the holy powers bestowed unto me through the machinations of this platform, I grant thee to even post more than one, too!

When in doubt, shut up.

"To strike another blow for freedom allows a man to walk a little taller and hold his head a little higher. And while he can, he must." - William J Brennan, former justice of the US Supreme Court. I keep it taped to my door to remind me why I'm here.

• I know that I know nothing.
• Perfection is killing you.
• A book a day keeps the haters away (ok, I made this one up. Still, quite a good advice and a real fine way to spend one's time)

In the same vein:

Someone smart said nothin' at all.

I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next  one.

-Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

We evolve, beyond the person that we were a minute before. Little by little, we advance with each turn. That's how a drill works!

Simon, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." - Karl Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte"

Great quote. But sometimes I think "twice" was overly optimistic.

"Say what you mean, mean what you say."

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.

We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

-Donald Rumsfeld

The aide said that guys like me [Suskind] were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

-Unknown but commonly attributed to Karl Rove

My reasoning for why these matter:

The Rumsfeld quote lives on with me due to its sheer absurdity and his explanation behind the impetus for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, that the inability to predict 9/11 was a "failure of imagination." Yet it seems the "imaginations" in charge continue to become more and more narrow and unable to imagine anything outside of a set of prescribed ideas. I actually hate this quote because it reveals the kind of absurdist thinking behind the beginnings of the fascist machinations we live under today.

The Rove quote lives on with me because as much as I hate his guts, he was abso-fucking-lutely right and the Trump administration has practically weaponized this against the "reality based community" which spends its time on journalism and court cases that take years while a thousand new crimes have been committed in the meantime, all of which will take further years of journalism and court cases to resolve. A death by a thousand cuts by moving so fast that the rest of us are "left to just study what [they] do."

Sorry my quotes are kind of downers and not ones you actually want to live by. However, we're living through dark times and I think understanding the mindsets of those would cage and kill us is pretty important.

No need to apologize. FWIW I enjoyed reading this comment. Thanks :)

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"It is better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln (or honestly a like a dozen different other sources...this one has many different variants).

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

• Jean-Luc Picard. In Star trek: The Next Generation s2e21

"This too shall pass"

Attar records the fable of a powerful king who asks assembled wise men to create a ring that will make him happy when he is sad. After deliberation the sages hand him a simple ring with the Persian words "This too shall pass" etched on it, which has the desired effect.

“We don’t care what music you kids love, so long as you have music to love.” From the Hopeless Savages comic

The one that’s keeping me going nowadays is Samwise from The Movie:

Sam: It’s all wrong By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?

Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

Reminds me of another one.

“Mmm whatcha sayyy~”

With great power comes great responsibility

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

Man who walk through turnstile sideways is going to Bangkok.

The second quote sounded familiar, so I googled it. It is from Proverbs 17:28. I guess Lincoln read his bible.

Whenever I'm about to do something, I think, "would an idiot do that?" and if they would, I do not to that thing.

• Dwight Schrute

No matter where you go, there you are.

—Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ, ca. A.D. 1440

Also

• Buckaroo Bonsai

• Be excellent to each other
• If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you ever tried
• If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment
• The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing

whistling that goddamned song

im just gonna comment and upvote.

To be the artery to your vein:

It's better the ask and sound ignorant, than say nothing and remain so.

nihil novum sub sole

• Be excellent to each otheR
  And party on dudes!

“This too shall pass”

I need to etch that into my toilet seat.

Serenity Prayer:

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

I'm not religious at all, but you can just kinda omit the first 3 words and the meaning is the same.

It's pretty much the basis of Acceptance Commitment Therapy - which is an effective way to manage anxiety and depression.

Or tattoo it on your ass
https://youtu.be/Tg5kB4UcAuA

When getting into an argument and the other person is just losing their shit and yelling and being uncivilized, it's best to keep your calm and let them vent. Stay cool and collected. And when arguing back, use facts and talk about your feelings.

The moto I live my life by is “The day you stop learning is the day you become obsolete.”

The one I wish more people took to heart is, “After everything has been said, and everything has been heard, these three remain: faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love.”

Just love each other, that’s all I’m asking for.

"The only winning move is not to play."

Following from your post about indecision: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"

I'm going to butcher it, but it's something like: The more you learn the more you realize how little you know.

Politics aside, the Rumsfeld quote makes perfect sense to me.

It's not particularly wise, but it's definitely my all time favorite.

"You knew the job was dangerous when you took it."

Almost always applicable.

"know thyself"

Plato? I think it's Plato idk

The moto I live my life by is “The day you stop learning is the day you become obsolete.”

Working in tech, eh?

Digging your choices, either way :)

All form is interpretation

"Deleted by creator" is definitely got some wisdom hidden in it

never trust a fart

Your favourite restaurant will end before you do

"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards" -Tommy Boy tagline

"I'm too drunk to taste this chicken!" - Col. Sanders

"If you're out to get the honey, then you don't go killin' all the bees" - Joe Strummer

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

Alan Watts

Read it, and I mean really read it. then think about what it is that you inherited that you defend and why you should continue to defend it.