Ask HN: What is a quote that permanently changed the way you think?

Today i-is Friday, Friday (Partyin')

that alone made me quit all that drug stuff.

i still respect that other people need it for their own causes, but i have strong opinions on safety especially on addictive ones. i still find myself lucky i didn't got into addictive downward spiral with the things i got my hands on.

It is up to me

> It was a really different political economy in the ’70s and ’80s. You were not waiting to save up for an apartment; you were usually on a list that your parents put you on, and you were waiting to be granted the right to an apartment. You didn’t have a hope of a car. And jobs were — not exactly a crapshoot, but you were going to be assigned something.

You could actually start — if you went through college (even if you didn’t), you might be in a position to have a place to live and an income to support a family at 21, 22, and nothing much to save up for. No real way to save up, no real goal to save towards.

https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jacob-mikanowski...

I like it because it makes me think about what people want from life, and how people may behave differently (and the same) when their opportunities were so different.

Clearly in most ways things were worse, but I can't help feeling there would be something liberating about not being on the hedonistic treadmill your whole life

Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own. -- Bruce Lee

I grew up in a place where a lot of people were addicted to drugs and alcohol and where poverty was pretty bad. I would see how they all encouraged each other to continue on their paths to self-destruction through their friendships, and I guess I was already quite picky about who my friends were but after hearing that quote I have definitely become more picky about friendships.

Then someone else once made a remark to me (which I can’t remember word for word to quote it) about watching crabs in a bucket, how they could all escape but they keep pulling each other down.

Those two quotes/concepts together have meant for me, friendship is never really a strong priority. I’m really not interested in feeling popular, and I don’t tend to struggle with loneliness because I see people all the time. I also have family members that I’m extremely close to. Especially my brother - who just gets me.

I grew up a bit of a loner and I struggled to make friends as a kid because I was super shy. People never realised I was shy because I was also super loud and talkative when I found people I felt comfortable talking to… but I generally won’t talk to new people unless they talk to me first. So maybe those quotes resonated because I was already destined to be a bit of a loner anyway and extremely selective with my friends… but I think when you think about how friendships can start to define the environments you choose to put yourself in, I think it’s a pretty life changing quote because perhaps you could change your life for the better, by changing the people you surround yourself by.

Don't believe for one moment that 5 hours on Product Hunt or anywhere else for that matter represents a serious marketing effort.

If you want to run a business rather just create stuff, your work has only just begun. In the light of Facebook and other social media revelations, the idea of a truly disposable email address which means your entire life is not analysed and spammed to death has to be worth something.

You haven't told anyone about it though. And I mean you shout from the rooftops every day and everywhere you can think of. You market. People are not going to come looking for you. You have to start approaching influencers, be seen and be heard everywhere you think your potential users might lurk.

And, by the way, everyone sees a million new ideas a day so you have to be consistent, appear to be permanent and appear to be solid. No-one is going to entrust communications with you if they think you are a small, one-man band with an idea and little else.

Time to start reading marketing articles and strategies and applying them.

And expect it to take time.

In a deeper sense, it’s made me realize that a lot of our attitudes are socially conditioned and not actually what is “natural.”

Marjane Satrapi

Told to me by a more senior colleague at work when I was still wet behind the ears.

— Iain McGilchrist, The Master and his Emissary (2009)

Chris Hadfield, Canadian astronaut, found on zenpencils.com

A second one from the webcomic "Order of the Stick":

"You're not a type! You're a person, a person who does stuff! If you want to be different, do different stuff! Look at me. I used to be a town guard, and then I decided I wanted to be a cleric. Did everyone I know tell me, "Oh, I don't really think you're the type to be a cleric"? Yes! Did I listen to them? No! If anyone tells you that you can't be better if you want to be, you punch them in their stupid judgy face! And you know what the best part is? When you make a change, everyone who meets you from that point on? Only knows the new version of you. And that's nice."

And a last one:

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

Benjamin Franklin, found in Civilization IV

The principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qPGbl2gxGqI

- Carl Sagan