What are your favourite “pretend-deep” quotes; stuff that sounds deep and meaningful but is in fact obvious, trite, pointless or stupid?
I’m thinking of Time Cubes “A mother and baby are the same age, as a 1 day old baby has a 1 day old mother” (really?!?) and Fight Clubs “On a long enough timeline the survival rate of everyone drops to zero” (really?!?). They sound deep enough to give you a couple of seconds pause, until you realize what has actually been said: nothing.
The quote of that nature that leaves me grinding my teeth is the so-called wisdom of Yoda from Empire Strikes Back: “Do, or do not. There is no try.”
Yeah, right. Try telling that to any firefighter!
“Wherever you go, there you are.”
Dumbass.
I liked the Matrix’s “Everything that has a beginning…has an end.” Oh reeeeeeeally?
I feel more like I do now than I did when I got here. (annon, from a bathroom wall in Kelly’s bar in Kansas City Mo 1974)
Mean people suck.
The damn pervasive annoyingly pretentious Serenity Prayer®, without a doubt.
Look, folks:
You obtain the wisdom to know the difference between the things you can change and the things you wish you could but can’t largely by trying and finding out. From your successes and failures you learn, if you have the courage to make the relevant attempts. Serenity to accept the things you cannot change comes after.
In the order the stupid thing is written (and posted and replicated everywhere ad nauseum, it sounds to my ears like “God let me wimp out and accept as unchangeable the things I wish I could change but don’t have the courage to make the attempt and find out.”
Anyone who saw the last Matrix move knows thats a bigass lie.
“Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life”. No, really?
Wow. You actually -watched- the last Matrix?
I figured Reloaded was enough to keep anyone from caring how the last one turned out.
Humbly submitted for your perusal an earlier thread on the subject.
“Which is farther, to Duluth or by bus?”
Bathroom, U of Wisconsin, early 80’s.
Well, I disagree with this one. Of course it’s obvious, but it wasn’t stated in the movie as a profound piece of wisdom, but rather as a truism along the lines of “Hey, we all gotta die some time”. Similarly, “Wherever you go, there you are” was a take-off of mock-profound quotes and wasn’t meant to be profound in itself.
I was out of sleeping pills.
“He who questions training, trains in asking questions”
‘Mystery Men’ was a pretty crap movie, but it has some memorable lines.
“Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”
Try telling that to a quadriplegic sometime.
I hate to bring this up, but some of these ARE really important because some of us are…well…a little dense. Especially if we suffer from, and are trying to recover from, addiction. They may seem blindingly obvious, but sometimes we have blinders on a lot of the time.
I really didn’t plan for* blindingly * and blinders to be in the same sentence. It just came out that way.
:smack:
I leave now.
I think that’s actually a good saying, and not at all as obvious as it seems, at least to a lot of people. The point is that you cannot escape your own worldview, your own prejudices, your own shortcomings, just by moving away or being in some other circumstance. It’s like that story about the old man who hears from two guys just arriving in a town far away from where they lived before. The first to arrive asks the old man, “What are people in this town like?” The old man says, “Well, what were they like where you came from?” Guy says, “Oh, they were horrible. Nosy bastards. Couldn’t get along with any of them.” Old man says, “People here are the same way.” Next guy comes along and asks the old man, “What are people in this town like?” Old man askes, “What were they like were you came from?” Guy says, “Great! Everybody was friendly and kind and good hearted.” Old mans says, “People here are the same way.”
My favorite twist on this one is, “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stranger.”
In other words, “See this twitch? It’s from something that didn’t quite kill me.”
Well, that’s another one. Maybe it’s because I’m an old man, but I see value in some of these. Like that one. It doesn’t mean that your muscles will be stronger if you’re beaten to a pulp, but that your character will be stronger if you endure great struggle. Christopher Reeves may be a quadriplegic, but he is stronger than ever.