Random Thoughts On The Passing Scene - Part 4
General Quips, Axioms, Sayings, and Mantras I like (profound and otherwise)
Collected over many years, attribution for the title goes to amazing Thomas Sowell based on his once regular column of the same title. Read all of those first and perhaps a second time before mine. I have to note that Art Carden beat me to this.
[Disclaimer that these might be partially or wholly, but completely unintentionally, stolen.]
I think for a lot of people looking at geopolitical conflicts throughout history all just amounts to “my book club is better than your book club”.
When we make the status quo sacred, we sacrifice the future for the sake of the past.
I am amazed by the rationalization gymnastics so many go through to reach this maxim: I don't do drugs; I do medicine.
You are old when items on your bucket list are being checked off faster than they are being added.
You can't obey a rule you can't question.
Our natural instinct is to view our parents as everything we dislike about ourselves and at the same time view our children as everything we like about ourselves.
The more specific your goals or aspirations (e.g., career goals), the greater the need for diversity and quantity of backup plans.
Imagine you were tasked with digging a ditch, but you were given an axe. You'd look like you were working exceptionally hard and you would be, but you wouldn't be getting anywhere. Sometimes it is about the tool regardless of the effort.
Our individual children are the best and sometimes the only significant opportunity we have to change the world.
To see the innocence and beauty of a child, one must possess in oneself innocence and beauty.
We are all world travelers to one degree or another.
Change is reality. There are two ways of approaching change: you can try to resist or you can try to adapt. Only one of those is a successful strategy.
...[it's] like a football coach's brilliant offensive strategy that simply relies on just a 1-yard gain on fifth down.
Everything that is not fully in the past is always up for negotiation, and you are always negotiating. Events that have passed while not specifically up for negotiation are still fluid in that our interpretation and understanding of the past is always being negotiated.
~70% of the time the reason a person gets fired not-for-cause (for-cause and layoffs excluded) is because of personality or work ethic. Skill set is almost never a major factor. ~20% of the time it is because the organization doesn't know how to use the talent of the person involved. ~10% of the time it is something else.
In terms of achieving success adaptability is underrated while planning is overrated. Circumstances (the rules and down-and-distance) and values (the goal posts) are always changing.
There is an extreme tension between the aspirations of equality in the moment versus equality in the long run.
I have an aspirational weight and a dreamed-of height. Is your goal an aspiration or a dream?
Don't state your opinions as facts.
Be as fast as you have to be and no faster. (Inspired by a maybe-from-Einstein quote)
Know who you're talking to versus who you're talking about.
Fallacious motivated reasoning: A critical thinker is someone with an insight about how you are brilliant. A cynic is someone with an insight about how you are wrong.