Modern Philosophies

  • If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
  • A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
  • Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
  • For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
  • He who hesitates is probably right.
  • Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
  • No one is listening until you make a mistake.
  • Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.
  • The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required on it.
  • The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
  • To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
  • To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.
  • Two wrongs are only the beginning.
  • Work is accomplished by those employees who have not reached their level of incompetence.
  • You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive. (The corollary is: You never learn to pray until your kids learn to drive!)
  • The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
  • Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life.
  • The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.
  • The greater the diameter of knowledge the larger the circumference darkness.

Room for More

A philosophy professor stood before his class and had some items in front of him.

When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a large empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, rocks about 2″ in diameter.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was. The students laughed. The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

“Now,” said the professor, “I want you to recognize that this is your life. The rocks are the important things – your family, your partner, your health, your children – things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else, the small stuff.

“If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Take care of the
rocks first – the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

But then a student then took the jar which the other students and the professor agreed was full, and proceeded to pour in a glass of beer. Of course the beer filled the remaining spaces within the jar making the jar truly full.

The moral of this tale is: no matter how full your life is, there is always room for beer.