What's your favorite profound quote?

"Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing."

Dalinar Kholin

I am typically this when someone accuses me of being a hypocrite. Either way, I certainly do tolerate it though, in fact I have a system for it.
Whoa I've never thought this thought. Thank you for sharing.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Anatole France

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

That's a pretty accurate way of looking at things.
- I doubt.

This too shall pass.

No matter how good or bad your life is, there will ways be change.

That works both ways though. Even the fable where the quote originated had that as a takeaway.
- This. Temporariness is temporary. Soon everything will be permanent.

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.

Or, if you like it more pithy: "The difference between theory and practice is larger in practice than it is in theory."

Comparison is the thief of happiness.

I have many favorites, but this comes to mind often.

Fear shrinks the brain.

Is another good one.

Fear is the mind-killer
- I like that. Also, “if they want you to be afraid, they don’t want you to think.”

Change your perspective... and the reality changes!

That's what a daycare npc told me in Pokemon Black. Although I haven't really found much use for the quote, it has stuck with me for long.

"To know which questions are unanswerable, and to not answer them: this is the skill that is most needful in times of stress and darkness."

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Ursula LeGuin has definitely seen some shit
- Being a socialist living under capitalism will do that to you.

Off the top of my head, I'm going to go with Hanlon's razor: "Don't attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity"

Although, it's complicated by the existence of willful or lazy ignorance.

I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks he knows. I neither know nor think I know.

Socrates

Unfortunately, a lot of smart people still have this problem. I'd say I'm pretty damn well rounded and all that's taught me is how easy it is to find a subject that I don't know that's still very important. Meanwhile, you can hardly throw a rock without finding a civil engineer that thinks he should rule the world.
- To be fair to the engineers it's not hard to do a better job then the people paid to be make our lives miserable for the profit of a few.

"Change and comfort rarely come together"

Unattributed quote from a manager I work with

“1 in a million chances happen 9 times out of 10”
— Terry Pratchett

Sir Terry is all to easy to quote. This one always gets me thinking:
"There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate. Vimes wondered if he’d sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he’d dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense.
It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers—say, three per citizen. Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw, though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing, and it was this: criminals don’t obey the law. It’s more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like Hogswatch every day.
Some citizens took the not-unreasonable view that something had gone a bit askew if only naughty people were carrying arms. And they got arrested in large numbers.
The average copper, when he’s been kicked in the nadgers once too often and has reason to believe that his bosses don’t much care, has an understandable tendency to prefer to arrest those people who won’t instantly try to stab him, especially if they act a bit snotty and wear more expensive clothes than he personally can afford.
The rate of arrests shot right up, and Swing had been very pleased about that. Admittedly, most of the arrests had been for possessing weaponry after dark, but quite a few had been for assaults on the Watch by irate citizens.
That was Assault On A City Official, a very important and despicable crime, and, as such, far more important than all these thefts that were going on everywhere. It wasn’t that the city was lawless. It had plenty of laws. It just didn’t offer many opportunities not to break them.
Swing didn’t seem to have grasped the idea that the system was supposed to take criminals and, in some rough-and-ready fashion, force them into becoming honest men. Instead, he’d taken honest men and turned them into criminals. And the Watch, by and large, into just another gang."
And that from a liberal Englishman. I was taken aback reading Monstrous Regiment. "Did this guy write a book full of trans characters 21-years ago?! (Honestly, it got a little silly at the end with all the characters ending up trans, and a couple gay I think.)

If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.

H. H. Dalai Lama

"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."

H.G. Wells

”A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts.” Alan Watts

I think it’s just a reminder of the pointlessness of overthinking. I find it poignant because I spend a lot of time lost in rumination, myself

Alan Watts is so fun. He used words like that monk lady in the marvel movies that slaps people out of their bodies.
He’s masterful with words. So masterful he makes it look easy.
So many teachers like “beyond this point words fail”, and they’ve got a good point, but Watts goes “let me give it a shot” and then conveys things in words that can take years to grasp through the brute force method of direct perception.
People shit on words, and with very good reason, but they are the chutes and ladders that make enlightenment in a single lifetime possible if one’s lucky enough to have a teacher like Watts.
- Yes!
  "Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way." Alan Watts

The willow knows what the storm does not: that the power to endure harm outlives the power to inflict it.

From the Magic: The Gathering card "Blood of the Martyr"

Oi oi oi. Me gotta hurt in here. Me smell a ting is near. Gonna bosh, and gonna nosh, and then the ting will disappear.
— Uthden Troll
Those who will not follow are doomed to lead.
From the Magic: The Gathering card "Anarchist"

I really like that one, thanks for sharing.

Better to piss in the sink than sink in the piss

Haha but really my favorite quote is
Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
Really helps me feel better about the fact that I'm a 28 year old man who exclusively watches anime

“Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.”

-Hunter S. Thompson

“Anything worth doing, is worth doing more of.”
-also Hunter S. Thompson, probably

Choosing proprietary tools and services for your free software project ultimately sends a message to downstream developers and users of your project that freedom of all users—developers included—is not a priority.

— Matt Lee, https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/opinion-github-vs-gitlab

On a post about GitHub Vs Gitlab - lol.
https://forgejo.org/

What is better: to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?

-Paarthurnax

“The problem with internet quotes is that you cannot always depend on their accuracy.”

― Abraham Lincoln 1864

Soulmates are not found. They're made.

Don't let quotes tell you what to think.

Gnorv
- Wayne Gretzky

Though there are questions as to its veracity, "a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad". As an artist, this is the reason I'll never rush things and spend ample time on my art.

"LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?"

From Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett.

From Frank Herbert’s Dune

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it’s a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength." - Marcus Aurelius

You practising stoicism?
- Sort of.
  More it's just the way I've pretty much always been. Before I was even really aware of it, I apparently figured out that I couldn't control the outside world but I could control how I reacted to it, so that was what I focused on. One could sort of say that I did it simply because it made sense to me, but even that makes it sound more conscious than it was. It's more that it just never occurred to me to do things any other way.
  It was only much later that I discovered that there was a philosophy called "stoicism" that advocated that.

David Foster Wallace: You'll stop worrying* what others think about you when you realize how seldom they do.

It might 'caring' rather than 'worrying', I'm not sure, and can't be bothered finding the book to check it.

It's also possible that DFW didn't coin this phrase.

Don't do what you think you have to do... only do what you absolutely must do

"“That’s not fair, you know. If we knew when we were going to die, people would lead better lives.” IF PEOPLE KNEW WHEN THEY WERE GOING TO DIE, I THINK THEY PROBABLY WOULDN’T LIVE AT ALL."

From Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett.

A new one I heard from Nightcrawler, he probably quoted someone else...

"Love is best measured by the things we forgive. "

I'm a simple man:

“What day is it?” asked Pooh.

“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.

“My favorite day,” said Pooh.

We growing wiser, or are we just growing tall?

Damian Marley

Intelligence is the ability to understand and predict things.
Wisdom is the tendency to make decisions that turn out well.
I figure by that definition knowledge, conditioned responses, muscle memory, perspective, commitment to certain values, beliefs, it’s all part of wisdom.

Anything Einstein said I have a bias towards.

Gnothi Sauton

I lost the game