Ask Lemmy

"We only use ten percent of our brains."

People genuinely believe this and never learned where it came from.

"Everything happens for a reason"

The cancer disagrees.

"I could care less".

Oh really? How much less?

“They’re just one bad apple” in reference to (more often than not) shitty cops, but also for most malcontents in a position of public trust. This a misappropriation of the aphorism “one bad apple spoils the bunch” which is literally saying that if there’s one bad actor in a group, the entire group is comprised.

"Customer is always right" isn't a trump card for customers to win disputes with the staff. When it comes to matters of preference, yes, the customer is always right. Ketchup on ice cream? Great. Down jacket and shorts? Sure thing! If it makes you happy and you're paying for it then you're always right.

In most other matters though, customers are usually wrong. The idea that random people off the street know more about the products and the way a business should be run than the actual people selling said products and running said business is absolutely ridiculous.

"if you can't handle me at my worst you don't deserve me at my best".

You're basically excusing bad behavior. And never taking accountability. People are wrong. Mostly when they are so blindly following some perception of greatness rather than caring for those around you.

"Survival of the fittest" when used to indicate the stongest should survive. Instead of the one best suited for (fitting) the situation.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

That is not the definition of insanity

"Agree to disagree." No, dipshit, you're just wrong.

I do not agree to disagree, because we're not arguing about opinions. Your belief is simply, objectively incorrect. Or mine is, which is something that I would be willing to accept. If I were wrong, you'd be able to convince me that I'm wrong. We can keep going until one of us accepts that we didn't have an accurate understanding of reality.

It's always the dipshits that fall back on "Well, we will have to agree to disagree," usually right after they've been presented with enough evidence to change the mind of a rational person. Fuck that, I do not agree to disagree.

do or do not, there is no try

Fuck you. That was meant for a Jedi master not your fucking IT systems admin

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Especially when used by people claiming to have done just that.

Whenever "woke" is brought up.

Please give me your definition of woke, because so far it's been different for everyone I've talked to.

Anything described as "just common sense." No, it's knowledge/awareness that you picked up from your particular environment. Not everyone has had the same exposure as you.

"They need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps!" Apparently, the quote originates from like a late 1800s textbook or something, and it was a logic problem: "Why cannot a man pull himself up by his own bootstraps?" It's not possible, 'cause physics.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. And as far as I can tell Einstein never said it but it's always attributed to Einstein

"actually we're a republic" when someone defends democracy

I live in the US and follow rugby.

"Rugby is a hooligan's sport played by gentlemen, soccer is a gentleman's sport played by hooligans."

So cringe. Different sports are different. I can like both, I can even play both, and neither suffers a loss.

"Fuck around and find out"

"make it was simple as possible"

Super annoying, because the people who use this always forget the second half, which makes the saying useful.

"Make it as simple as possible, but no simpler" it is effectively a re-stating of Occam's razor.

Occam's razor, because it seem it is often used wrong by using it for just shutting down possible explanations. Typically noone mentions, that this is about guessing probabilities without prior knowledge and not a way to completely ignore an explanation.

No one wants to work anymore.

"not all heroes wear capes"

"Galileo too was ostracized for his beliefs, but he was right"

Yeah but he did science, not that new age bullshit you think are an expert in.

I guess you don't see it too much these days (outside of maybe yearbooks or collections of inspirational quotes), but Frost's "I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made the difference."

If you read the rest of the poem the narrator explicitly states in several different ways that the roads are pretty much the same. So the narrator is saying that by later on saying the roads are different he'll be retroactively be justifying his choice or just not telling the truth about it.

"think of how stupid the average person is, and then think half of them are dumber than that"

So heavily overused.