MetaChat - "When you don't create things,

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14 August 2008

"When you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability." has become my new mantra. Well that and "Strong opinions, weakly held." Any other new wise statements out there I should be aware of?

post by: seanyboy at: 06:16 | 22 comments

I've always been a fan of Joe Strummer's "No input, no output!"

posted by richat 14 August | 06:39

"The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best time is now."

Or you can go with Peter Tork's "Nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humor." which isn't quite as inspirational.

posted by Slack-a-gogo 14 August | 08:48

I like that first one, seanyboy.

Can't think of any myself, just now.

posted by Miko 14 August | 08:50

Mahalia Jackson:
"You're blessed if you have the strength to work."

Solomon Burke:
"You gotta do it with class and integrity. If not, you're gonna drag yourself through the mud."

Charlie Parker:
"If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn."

Ray Charles:
"I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't been able to hear."

Bobby Womack:
"You gotta know when it's time to hang up. But when I finally go, let me go out on stage, my perfect ending. Don't let me go when I'm sick or asleep. Let me be in motion."

Louis Armstrong:
"You blows who you is."

posted by Hugh Janus 14 August | 08:52

My personal motto comes from a Yiddish proverb:

"If I try to be like him, who will be like me?"

posted by BoringPostcards 14 August | 08:58

I've always thought of it in sort of cosmological terms, as "people know you for what you emit, not what you absorb."

posted by Wolfdog 14 August | 09:08

Seanyboy, once you reach age 50 or so, keep this in mind: "never trust a fart."

posted by netbros 14 August | 09:35

'Try to do the most good, by the most people, most of the time' is my general motto for ethical behaviour.

And 'What would Katharine Hepburn do?', essentially paraphrasing Hugh's 'You gotta do it with class and integrity'.

posted by goo 14 August | 11:40

I keep a running tab of my favorites here

One that I hadn't added yet:

"In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it." - Robert A. Heinlein

posted by lysdexic 14 August | 11:58

"Is this really about me?" has been working pretty well for me lately. Especially since about 60% of the time, the answer is "No," and 30% of the time, the answer is "Yes, but it's about me only because my own shit is getting in the way."

posted by occhiblu 14 August | 12:00

I've been thinking about getting my first tattoo done (not that I plan more, just that I don't have any yet). I guess I'll have to choose a script, but I'd like to have the Italian phrase, "Eppur si muove" running down my arm.

Legend has it that Galileo muttered this after recanting before the Inquisition his belief that the Earth moves around the Sun. It means, "And yet it moves." It would probably have been fatal for him to even whisper this, so I doubt that the man truly said it, but something about truth to power, and something about the idea that however we interpret the world, it ticks on without regard for what we think; man, that just pumps my nads enough to get a tattoo, I think.

We'll see, though. Good tattoos are pricey.

posted by Hugh Janus 14 August | 12:04

How much of this is really my business?

Also, I just heard a saying: "resentment is liking taking poison and waiting for the other person to die," which isn't really relevant here but it's pretty good anyway.

posted by small_ruminant 14 August | 12:33

"Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome."

--Samuel Johnson

posted by mrmoonpie 14 August | 12:35

More Solomon Burke:

"I don't want nobody to give me no flowers when I'm dead and gone. Give me my flowers while I'm living, so I can feel them, smell them, see them."

posted by Hugh Janus 14 August | 12:49

"The fish doesn't know the water." - jouke

posted by jouke 14 August | 13:03

"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite"

Bertrand Russell

posted by gaspode 14 August | 13:18

and less of a mantra or personal motto or whatever, but just one of my favorite thoughts:

“Where the world ceases to be the stage for personal hopes and desires, where we, as free beings, behold it in wonder, to question and to contemplate, there we enter the realm of art and science. If we trace out what we behold and experience through the language of logic, we are doing science; if we show it in forms whose interrelationships are not accessible to our conscious thought but are intuitively recognized as meaningful, we are doing art. Common to both is the devotion to something beyond the personal, removed from the arbitrary.”

Albert Einstein.

posted by gaspode 14 August | 13:19

You know, when you combine these two:
"people know you for what you emit, not what you absorb."
"never trust a fart."

You can come up with my personal motto:
"People won't like you if you crap yourself in public."

posted by rmless2 14 August | 14:06

"With a good diaper, anything is possible."

posted by Hugh Janus 14 August | 14:13

"There's only one rule I know of, babies: God damn it, you've got to be kind." -- Kurt Vonnegut

posted by DevilsAdvocate 14 August | 16:18

"Everybody poops."

posted by jason's_planet 14 August | 18:46

I had to look up "strong opinions, weakly held" because I didn't understand what it was trying to say. It appears to be the slogan of some kind of think tank in Palo Alto.

I guess it'd be funnier if they were weekly held.

posted by birdie 14 August | 21:08

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