“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.”
- Picard
I do think of this quote as being something awesome that Picard said, but something also bugs me when I think of it that way… I’m attributing a great line, and advice I follow a lot through life to a fictional character, instead of to the man that actually said it.
David Kemper wrote that episode of TNG, and while he may have heard it elsewhere or paraphrased it from a common saying in some distant land or who knows, at least we can attribute it to him as best we can :-)
Thanks for correcting the attribution
Here are a few nice ones, I can’t really pick:
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” - John Maynard Keynes
(You can also apply this one to proprietary software vs. Free software (don’t say open source in my presence))
“The tyrants are only great because we are on our knees.” - Étienne de La Boétie
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” - Rosa Luxemburg
don’t say [those words] in my presence
Will I regret asking why?
Free software tells you “do whatever you want, you’re free” but open source completely misses the point: it means you can read the code, but not necessarily recompile, modify and redistribute. Plus the term was invented for the confusion that would come from it. For example, a lot of AI models like LLM’s claim they are “open-source”, which basically means nothing: it’s far easier to say that than to claim it’s a free model, because that would imply freedoms to modify, reuse, redistribute the training data, weight etc. (no AI model allows that for now, and there will probably never be one that does).
Not OP, but I personally heavily dislike the confusion surrounding those terms - that is IMHO entirely self-inflicted. “Open-source” referring to FOSS as a whole, and what open-source sounds like actually being called “source available”, is needlessly confusing.
I usually write FOSS since I like acronyms, but when I speak I’d say open-source. I don’t see how open-source is any more confusing than free software, considering most people would immediately think “free as in beer”.
If only the term “free software” itself wasn’t just as confusing lol
In a similar vein “the greatest weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” … Steve Biko
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
- Ernest Hemingway (though I’ll admit, I first heard it in Kingsman)
You’re not fronting having read all Hemingway, you’re sharing a quote with everyone. It’s fine if you heard it in Kingsman, just as it would have been fine if you had heard it in some other work of fiction that quotes Hemingway.
I like this one, it really says don’t measure yourself against others
We do not inherit the world from our ansestors, we borrow it from our children. -Antoine de Saint Exupéry
This is my favorite.
My second favorite from him: what makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.
“I’d love to agree with you, but then we’d both be wrong.”
“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, direct, easy to understand and wrong.“
- Paraphrased H.L Mencken“To study religion is merely to know the mind of man, but if one truely wanted to know the mind of God, you must study physics.”
- Iain Banks“I believe that children are our future. Unless we stop them now.”
- Homer Simpson“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.”
“The brutally honest care more about the brutality than the honesty.”
“Reasonable people can disagree reasonably.”
I can’t live up to those ideals but it would be cruel to myself and others to stop trying to.
That first one really resonates with me.
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” ― Steven Weinberg
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is not democracy.
- Abraham Lincoln
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
I don’t want to believe, I want to know - Carl Sagan
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 (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, #2)
Continued - To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
The perfect comment doesn’t exi…
Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. - Mark Twain
“Not everything’s a lesson Ryan. Sometimes you just fail.”
- Dwight Schrute :D
As someone who loves space:
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” - Arthur C. Clarke
Perhaps my favourite, although it doesn’t touch on the human experience, it is food for imagination
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life. -Jean-Luc Picard - Star Trek - The Next Generation
