Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Piss-poor planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on mine.

Believe those who are seeking the truth, doubt those who find it

It takes a woman nine months to make a baby, nine women cannot make a baby in a month.

Classic (and likely mangled by myself) computer science quote which I always enjoy encountering in the wild!

It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.

Jean-Luc Picard

Something along the lines of:

‘You’re just an NPC in everyone else’ life, no one really cares about what weird shoes you wear, or whatever. No one’s remembering, don’t worry about it’

Really helps out in the world really, it’s kinda true.

If you want to travel fast, go alone; but if you want to travel far, go together.

It’s one of those African proverbs with an unknown origin but their emphasis on community has always been a guiding principle for me.

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

Marcus Aurelius

When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down… with the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!

- Cave Johnson, Portal 2

Maybe not words to live by, but certainly a memorable quote.

Not my whole life but ever since I learned it twenty years ago in the army. “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. It’s a saying that means to learn things carefully, slowly, and methodically. When you are learning like this speed will follow as a natural progression. So if you learn something slowly and smoothly it will translate into being quick and doing it correctly. I have applied this to all sorts of different things in life and it has never failed me.

My father, a union organiser: “You can love the company all you like, but the company will never love you back.”

Stood me in good stead down the years.

In 20 years, the only ones to remember all the hard work and long hours are your children.

In 100 years, nobody will care

Growing old is mandatory, growing up optional.

Murphy’s law is always apllicable, unless you depend on it.

“The best time to plant a tree is fifty years ago. The second best time is right now” - essentially don’t worry about what you could have done better, or what could have been, make now and the future as good as you can

and

“If you don’t fall off occasionally, you’re not trying hard enough” - originally told to me in the context of learning to windsurf (I still can’t windsurf), but applicable in a lot of areas. This doesn’t mean try to fall off, it means failure is a natural part of growth, not something to be shunned

Does a poem count? Ozymandias has stuck with me forever.

I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."