I'll have a go. Here's a few that seem almost axiomatic to me but that I think might be somewhat less so to this crowd:
- Words are important. Choose them carefully. Hear them carefully.
- "Tolerating everyone but the intolerant" is no real tolerance at all.
- Only being "free" to hold your views in private, is no real freedom at all. Freedoms of speech and association and religion must be public freedoms if they are to be meaningful in any real sense.
- There's a continuum that exists between equality and freedom. Governments and society can more-or-less choose where they sit on the continuum, but can't move more towards one value without trading off some of the other.
- Prices agreed to by individuals in a free market (read: without coercion) are a statement each individual is making about the value of the good or service being traded. What's a "fair wage" for mowing lawns? What's a "fair price" for a watermelon? How much is "too much" profit for a legal firm? Capitalism is nothing more than a recognition that built into humanity is a desire to trade what you have for what you want, and a declaration that the Free Market is the most economical (read: efficient) way for humans to fulfill that desire. Following on from the previous axiom, you can certainly declare a "fair price for watermelon", but you're removing the freedom of individuals to decide for themselves how they value the world around them.
- Be highly skeptical of anyone handing out pitchforks. And learn to recognize when you're being handed one in a news article, youtube video, reddit comment, political ad, etc., etc.
- When you feel like the world is full of people who aren't changing their values fast enough, remember Chesterton's Fence[0]. In the main, the world around you exists the way it does for a reason (or for a plethora of reasons), and if you don't understand that reason, you're less likely to understand what the right fix is.
- Debt (of all kinds: student, mortgage, business) is a promise you're making about your future. The older, more formal term for a loan is a "promissory note".
- Before you make any promise, consider your ability to predict and control the future.
- Constraints are natural pressures, disadvantages, and discomforts that can be helpful in decision-making. Don't avoid painful situations.
(I think those last three make a powerful argument for bootstrapping startups instead of chasing VC funding or debt.)
- We will always have "bad" laws. There is no one set of guidelines which humanity will ever discover that will cleanly cover all use cases and will be agreed upon as being right by everyone.
- Humans are moral creatures. Whenever anyone uses the word "should" or "ought" in a sentence, they're making a moral statement. Hawking may be a world leading physicist, but when he declared philosophy to be dead, there's a reason philosopher's all around the world shot milk out their noses[1].
- You can't legislate morality. But in a democracy, legislation is the lowest-common-denominator of the morality of the governed. This means that just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's moral. It also means that in a society which encourages diversity of values, you'll have less common ground upon which to legislate.
- Don't act surprised when someone is ignorant of a fact or subject which you know. Help them understand it with humility.
- Don't hesitate to disclose your ignorance of a subject to someone who can help you learn more about it. They may not want to point out your ignorance, and silently pretending you do understand it only keeps you from learning new things.
- Corporations are people. Or more precisely, its impossible to separate out the corporate entity's values and behavior from its owners' values and behavior.
- As much as possible, have your mind made up how you will handle pressure to compromise on your values before you're in a tenuous situation.
- Don't worry about "missing out". FOMO is terrible justification for doing things you wouldn't otherwise do. Though this isn't an argument against spontaneity.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton.27...
[1]: https://www.quora.com/How-are-philosophers-reacting-to-Steph...