This has influenced my entire idea of spending money:
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Used this against my controlling mother, who liked to lay BS at my feet and make me think it was my responsibility to fix. When it was HER that caused the whole thing. The look on her face when I hit her with that phrase and just turned around and left was priceless.
There a LOT of things that are just flat not your problem, even if someone else tries to make it yours.
If the penalty for breaking a law is a fine, that law only exists for poor people.
“Let go, or be dragged.”
It’s simple, yet so meaningful.
What you do when you don’t have to, makes you who you are.
Making fun of the weak (poor, minorities, etc) is easy because they can’t fight back, that’s why the best comedy is the one that upsets the powerful.
Some of the 1970s comedies in the UK haven’t aged too well in this regard.
Never do anything you would be afraid to explain to the paramedics.
If it takes only two minutes, do it right away.
I used to think of myself as a complete pacifist, but these words haven’t left my mind since I heard them:
You think you’re better than everyone else, but there you stand: the good man doing nothing. And while evil triumphs and your rigid pacifism crumbles into bloodstained dust, the only victory afforded to you is that you stuck true to your guns.
Of course this only applies to defense, never to offense (especially “preemptive defense”), but I can’t really argue against it.
Housing can’t be both affordable and a good investment.
Variation of this: Poor people rent, that’s how they stay poor.
It a saying from Ubuntu (the philosophy not the operating system) “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” in English it’s “I am because you are” It’s a simple and concrete way of saying how we’re not judged by how we treat others but we are who we are through our interactions with others.
Honestly I’ve only browsed through a bit of philosophy and I’m sure I missing a heap but it really struck me.
“You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” Pirkei Avot (2:21)
While I’m not religious, this Jewish quote resonates with me. The “work” is never truly finished, we can all do more to make things better, both for ourselves and our community.
Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life.
I find that this is particularly difficult for conservative, “pull yourself up from your bootstraps” types to understand. Some people think poor people, or those who have fallen into misfortune, were makers of their own tragedy. While it may sometimes be the case, I believe that more often than not, these people were just unlucky enough to born at the wrong place, at the wrong time, into the wrong family, neighbourhood, or country.
There are poor people inventing incredible things every day, but nobody around them has the power nor connections to make anything out of it. I watched a video of people who made a bike out of wood that could carry half a tonne, down an unpaved road at relatively high speeds, while metal bikes in developed countries have ratings for people under 150kg. But because those poor bike-makers were born where they were and had to toil in order to survive, day in and day out, there was never enough time for them for make their inventions a product to be produced and sold to the masses. Yet somewhere, there’s a conservative prick saying these people are lazy or aren’t smart.
First thought that came to me as well. Thank You Captain Picard…
This could have also been said by any speedrunner in a game with even a single RNG event.
“It is possible to make no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life.”
-Captain Jean-Luc Picard
