Only break one law at a time.

For example; If you have an AI executive tied up in the trunk of your car, make sure the tail lights all work.

It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you realize there is a way to solve problems without using violence.

"You do not treat a man like a gentleman because he is. You treat a man like a gentleman because you are."

In short: Don't worry about it.

In long: If you have a problem, you can either do something about it or you can't. If you can do something about it, do that thing instead of worrying. If you can't, worrying just gives you an additional problem.

There's a saying in Chinese. It rhymes in Chinese (which makes it so much cooler) but the translated version is this:

Given equivalent units of gold and time, it is easy to trade time for gold, but it is challenging to trade gold for time.

Essentially, be wary of how much you're devoting to your work, because it doesn't matter how successful you are, you will never get your life back

There's another one that I find to be very relevant with the times:

a boat with naturally straighten itself when it nears a bridge

It's a descriptivist version of the English saying "we'll cross that bridge when we get there." Essentially, problems have a way of sorting themselves out when things get desperate enough

I have several that I live my life by. Being prompted has caused me to forget all of them

Here's a few that stuck with me over the years:

"A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle." --Jeff VanderMeer

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." --Gustav Mahler

"If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy." - - Sir Terry Pratchett

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." — George Bernard Shaw

Haven't seen it yet.

You can make no mistakes and still lose. That is not failure, that is life. -Picard

You have to do something poorly before you can do it well.

Moving the body moves the mind.

It could always be worse.

The future will always surprise you.

• Brush your teeth.

• No.

• The most dangerous minority are the Rich.

If it's your job to eat a frog every day, eat it for breakfast. If it's your job to eat two frogs, eat the big one first.

All you can do is your best, and your best will always be good enough.

Just because something is old doesn't mean it's obsolete, and just because something is obsolete doesn't mean it's ineffective.

Oh, I thought of another, which I’ve said to my kid hundreds of times over the years:

‘It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it’, typically with things like an umbrella or water.

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” - Douglas Adams

Perfection is the enemy of progress

"The graveyard is filled with people who had the right of way"

"The only decision you should do when you are angry is to stop being angry." Timothy Zahn

I've got some.

"I keep cutting but it's still too short."

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to act despite it."

"We see the effects of things, not the things themselves."

The purpose of a system is what it does. Or The wizards 5th rule: Mind people's actions over words.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

And last: Trust your gut.

Edit bonus after reading others responses;

Don't let perfection get in the way of good enough.

The classic weekend/party safety brief

• Do NOT add to the population.
• Do NOT subtract from the population.
• Do NOT end up in the newspaper, hospital or jail.
• • If you do end up in jail, establish dominance quickly.

We have a few addendums in my circles.

• A man should be in the newspaper three times, when he is born, when he is wed, and when he dies. (Ron Swanson)

• Never do anything you would be afraid to explain to the paramedics.

(Addressed to my college age relatives, I would always pick them up, the folks dont need to know, you do have to tell the guy scraping your sorry ass off the pavement what you broke)

"Comparison is the thief of joy."

your amygdala is stupid and always faster than your frontal cortex

A few from the file I keep:

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. - Jan van de Snepscheut

I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned. - Richard Feynman

Give a man a mask and he'll show you his true face. - Oscar Wilde (paraphrased)

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. - C.S. Lewis

Magic is science you can’t explain. Science is magic you can. - My Daughter

You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago. - Alan Watts

What you do to achieve your goals must never become more important than the goals themselves. - Anonymous

The US signs contracts in pencil.

Assumption is the mother of all fuckups.

When driving, you can say "I should have gone," as many times as you want, but "I shouldn't have gone." may be the last thing you say.

"I don't know" is a valid scientific statement and (hopefully) the beginning of wisdom

"The enemy of good is perfect."

Endlessly chasing perfect can destroy something that was already good.

"I could stick my head up a cows ass and see for myself, or I could just take the butcher's word."

Here's a random weird one that stuck with me for some reason. I was a young child whining about getting ready, how I hated socks. And I grumbled, 'who even invented socks, and why??'

My dad responded "Mr. Socks, and his feet were cold." Which is 100% false, but I feel like that silly answer told me a lot on how to think about stuff.

If you wait till the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.

people don’t remember what you say or do nearly as much as they remember the way that you make them feel.