Stupid Sayings

Beaconator said:
Of course I do. I'm just thinking of the reason why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Not because good intentions lead to evil but because evil people roll over those with good intentions.
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Good intentions sometimes go before unwise actions & negative consequences. Good intentions mean nothing if bad actions follow. Hitler probably thought he was doing good.
The saying is overused tho & too often used without validity.

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StrangerInAStrangeLand said:
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Good intentions sometimes go before unwise actions & negative consequences. Good intentions mean nothing if bad actions follow. Hitler probably thought he was doing good.
The saying is overused tho & too often used without validity.

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Exactly. The phrase is often used by the political Right as a lazy way of criticising government initiatives and social policies. As you say, its intended meaning is to criticise naive but well-meaning ideas. The user of this phrase ought, therefore, to justify why he thinks the idea criticised is naive.
 
StrangerInAStrangeLand said:
If I can do it, anyone can do it.

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Yey. That's a favouriote of mine. It's usually said by "self-made" men who don't give credit to the help they've been given, or the luck they've had.
And what they've "done" is fight their way to to the top of some highly competitive field, ruthlessly gobbling up a lot of smaller, slower dogs, to a position that can, by the very nature of the enterprise, only ever be occupied by one in ten thousand. What they mean is: if I eat you, it's your own fault for not eating me first.
Do they know that's what they mean?
 
I think many of them do.

When I was a lowly computer repair tech I went to my bosses and told them I could easily quadruple their sales for new systems, from four a week to fifty. I was hungry for something to do, not for a raise. I ate three fellow employees in the process. Sorry, Bob. Sorry, Chris. Sorry, Katie.

I'm there to get it done.

Which brings me a stupid saying: Get 'er done!
 
er - Last time I checked, the quadruple of four was sixteen. If you convinced your bosses that it's fifty, you're a heck of a salesman*. I'm pretty sure just anybody can't do that.
(*though I have to wonder how good a tech you may have been).
 
Allow me some literary license, please. Within a month they were shipping more than a hundred, and I had two full-time helpers to move things around..

And I was a very good tech. I got calls from other very good techs in town and elsewhere to help them solve strange things, and I was known for thinking outside the box before that was even a thing.

What I did was to tell one of the salesmen to get an order for fifty machines of the same configuration, and he backed me on the production change-up. I played horseshoes with Jim and his brother for three years afterwards, no charge for the beer and barbecue.
 
I'm sorry, that makes absolutely no sense to me. Would you be kind enough to rephrase it or clarify in some way?
 
Jeeves said:
Yey. That's a favouriote of mine. It's usually said by "self-made" men who don't give credit to the help they've been given, or the luck they've had.
And what they've "done" is fight their way to to the top of some highly competitive field, ruthlessly gobbling up a lot of smaller, slower dogs, to a position that can, by the very nature of the enterprise, only ever be occupied by one in ten thousand. What they mean is: if I eat you, it's your own fault for not eating me first.
Do they know that's what they mean?
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I have heard it from many types of people referring to many things. Losing weight, gaining weight, learning a language, realizing they were mistaken, overcoming addiction, etc etc.

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You need to get off the fence.


Sometimes that is valid yet very often, it is not.

Long ago, I was asked something & said "I do not believe there is a god & I do not believe there is not a god". I was told I should get off the fence. It has happened a few times since with theists & once with an atheist.

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