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

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

#1
From a book, movie, blog post, etc., or even irl.

And it doesn't have to be a fundamental shift in your worldview, just something consequential enough that you think back to it often and it affects your view/behavior with respect to a domain.

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

#5
"once you get the message, hang up the phone." terence mckenna

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.

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

#8
This one keeps coming back to me, from Jacob Mikanowski on Tyler Cowen's podcast about Eastern Europe:

> 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

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

#9
There are lots of quotes that I find inspirational, motivational, or generally useful in some way. But I'm not sure that I can come up with one off the cuff that "permanently changed the way I think." But this one probably comes about as close to meeting that bar as anything I can think of.

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

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

#10
The one that sticks with me is “show me your friends and I’ll show you your future”. (I’m sorry I can’t remember where I heard the quote).

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.

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