2025

This year I collected 295 quotes, here are the best of 2025.

• I invented a thought controlled air freshener, it makes scents when you think about it.
• Khrushchev was interrupted by a shout from a heckler in the audience. “You were one of Stalin’s colleagues. Why didn’t you stop him?”, “Who said that?” roared Khrushchev. An agonizing silence followed as nobody in the room dared move a muscle. Then Khrushchev replied quietly, “Now you know why I couldn’t stop him”.
• Culture Shock is the growing pains of a broadening perspective. — Rick Steves
• If something seems impossible, you’re probably missing something — Hank Green
• When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment feels like discrimination. — Thomas Sowell
• In Zig, the compiler works for the programmer, In Rust, the programmer works for the compiler — A comment on a YT video
• Everyone tests in production, but few are prepared for it. — Charity Majors
• Here I sit, broken hearted, came to shit, but only farted. — bathroom stall message
• A man asked a gardener why his plants grew so beautifully. The gardener said: “I don’t force them to grow. I remove what stops them.”
• Saying a programmer’s job is just to produce code is like saying a writer’s job is to produce words — Twitter
• Klingon Therapist: The battle against mental illness cannot be won decisively, it is a long campaign against an enemy who never tires. An enemy whose forces swell to twice their size whenever you look away. — Battle against a foe of such magnitude, who occupies your very mind.. Every moment you survive is a triumph against all odds. Against such a foe, there is no more honorable combat — Reddit
• Living with a dog is 90% following each other around, watching each other go potty, and wondering what the other has in their mouth.
• This service deserves some tomato sauce, to go with all the spaghetti code. — Derrick
• To eat a whole cake would be to commit the sin of gluttony. But to eat a whole pie is okay, as the sin of pi is zero
• Someone recently asked if we can query a partner team’s db directly for some data they don’t expose via an API, and I blurted out YOU DON’T GET DIRECT ACCESS TO YOUR NEIGHBOR’S WIFE — @VicVijayakumar
• Comparison is the thief of joy. If you constantly compare yourself to others, you will never be happy.
• ORMs don’t make SQL easier. They just make it slower and harder to debug. — Twitter
• Positivity tells a sad person that there is no reason to be sad. Warmth asks the sad person if they want to go get some ice cream.
• Fact: If you hold a Linux shell close to your ear, you can hear the C. You might think this is an old joke, but it’s actually brand GNU
• Knowledge earned, changes behavior, knowledge given, is easily forgotten.
• If it stays, it is love. If it ends, it’s a love story. And if it never begins, it is poetry
• Knowledge grows when you ask stupid questions. Stupidity grows when you don’t ask anything — Twitter
• Understanding the darkness doesn’t mean surrendering too it. It means gaining the power to create light.
• You, are a ghost, driving a meat-coated skeleton, made from stardust, riding on a rock, hurtling through space… Fear Nothing
• If you want to conduct the orchestra you have to turn your back on the audience. (You have to make yourself vulnerable in order to lead the band)
• One thing that bothers me about the avengers movie, “age of Ultron”, not once in the whole movie, do they tell us his age.
• Your annual reminder, if you ever get kidnapped by a group of mimes, they might do unspeakable things to you
• Opinions are like armpits, everybody has them and they all stink. — Hank Green
• Diplomacy is the art of telling people they can go to hell , while assuring them they will enjoy the trip.
• Why do programmers prefer dark mode? - Because light attracts bugs
• Technically alcohol IS a solution (a chemical solution)
• When a tree falls, everyone hears the sound, but when a tree grows, no one hears it. — Persian Proverb
• Resilience engineering in two words: anticipate surprise
• The reason docker was invented is because it’s literally easier to bundle an entire operating system than to install python packages. — Twitter
• The S in MCP stands for security — Twitter
• Working on a problem reduces the fear of it.
• It’s hard to fear a problem when you are making progress. Even if progress is imperfect and slow. Action can relieve anxiety
• If you can’t hire the level of people you WANT, and the people you HAVE are leaving, the mirror is the first place to look for the problem. — Derrick
• I have brain cells that can die, skin cells that can die and even hair cells that die. But the fat cells in my stomach must have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior since they seem to have eternal life
• From the perspective of plants, Lions are their protectors while herbivores are the evil ones.
• People are people, very few things are intentional, Never a tribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence, It’s far more likely that they are all in their own worlds, doing their own thing and they are not paying attention to the world around them. And we all do it everyday whether you’re driving, walking down the street. All of our lives are as complex as everyone else is, everything you have going on they have going on, nobody knows what everyone else is going through, We also need to be a little more self-aware of the world around us. — https://youtube.com/shorts/-2-_VqvgUhw?si=4g8hQSxT0uPIdpq9
• You cannot see your reflection in boiling water. Similarly, you cannot see the truth in a state of anger. when the waters calm, clarity comes
• Someone asked me this year, “Why is everything a joke to you”. I asked… Have you ever read Winnie the Pooh? The book, not the show. At the end of the book, Christopher Robin tells Winnie the Pooh and his friends that he can’t come back to the enchanted 100 acre Wood anymore because he has to be an adult, and he will never see them again, because he’s been told by the other adults, that’s what he must do. And I’m telling you, That that’s a fable, there’s no reason you can’t be an adult and not come back to the heart of the enchanted 100 acre wood, and spend time with Winnie, the Pooh and all his friends. You CAN do both and anyone who tells you otherwise, is simply regurgitating rhetoric that has been passed down to from those who are convinced that being an adult, means you have to burn the child inside — Derrick
• The only time more exciting to be alive than today is tomorrow. — Peter H. Diamandis.
• What is a storm troopers favorite store? The one next to Target
• People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.” — Steve Jobs
• “Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone.” — Anne Frank 1942
• If you write the problem down clearly, then the matter is half solved — Kidlins Law
• Instead of asking “how do I succeed?”, ask “how would I fail?” and then avoid those paths — Charlie Munger
• You matter. Unless you multiply yourself by the speed of light. Then you energy.
• The biggest tell of incompetence is evasion. Ask a direct question, and they won’t give you a direct answer. They’ll dance around it. Push harder, and they’ll dance some more. People who really know their craft know why something works and why it doesn’t. They understand the issues even if they can’t fix everything yet. — Tracy Britt Cool
• The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more. — Charlie Munger
• If hard work was the only thing needed to succeed, then the donkey would own the farm
• Success is not built in the moment, but what we commit to overtime — Simon Sinek
• Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels, but old men are guilty, if they forget what it is like to be young. — Dumbledore (J.K Rowling)
• The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. — Plato
• In the movie “the matrix”, Neo asks the Oracle the classic question: “If you already know what I’m going to do… do I really have a choice?” And she hits him with the line: “You’ve already made the choice. You’re just here to understand why.” For years I thought this meant “there’s no free will.” But that’s not it. Free will doesn’t exist in the moment. It exists in the identity that leads to the moment. The actions you take right now are shaped by your conditioning, experiences, fears, habits, and past. But the person you’re becoming… That’s where your freedom actually lives. **You don’t choose the moment. You choose the person who will meet the moment
• We are what we repeatedly do. excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit — Aristotle
• All of the smartest people are self-taught, even if they went to school
• Some people enjoy pain and suffering, and revel in complexity and hubris. I don’t judge them for their vices. But they can’t be on my team. — Derrick
• We don’t control what happens, We control how we react to what happens
• The only way to achieve greatness in life is to have patience, consistency, and discipline — David Goggins
• At the principal level, your primary output is decision quality, not code velocity. If the company only needed more throughput, they’d scale headcount or buy tools. They bring in principal engineers when the cost of a bad decision exceeds the cost of an extra hire. The principal engineer’s real work starts when things are unclear: Requirements are fuzzy, Trade-offs are uncomfortable, Deadlines conflict with correctness, Short-term wins threaten long-term health — Twitter
• If you want to make the wrong decision, ask everyone — Naval Ravikant
• Everyone has the opportunity and the obligation to push back on the temptation to despair, because despair is seductive — Stephen Colbert https://youtu.be/uQuvGfmfuk8?si=XO8HzkTIDKh4dZ0b
• To whomever might be reading this, — You’re incredible even when you feel you’re not. You might feel lost now, but great things are coming your way. You’re stronger than you think, and have a lot to accomplish, don’t give up. Remember, you matter and you’re not alone.