adage, chestnut, cliché, old wives' tale, proverb, trope, truism: concise insight? or hackneyed vestige?

[sear]

They've been called "old sayings".
Some may have been truisms, but no longer are. Example: "What goes up must come down."
NASA's unmanned probe Voyager won't be back until the "big crunch" *.

Many of them are authored by, or attributed to Benjamin Franklin.
Many more are from the Holy Bible.

"Ideas are not for believing. Ideas are for using." psychologist Joy Browne

"A penny saved is a penny earned." A notion promoting thrift.

"Don't count your chickens before they've hatched." A useful standard for anyone that's ever bought a lottery ticket.

"Look before you leap." A reminder to exercise caution, anticipate consequence.

Are there any you've found inspiring, useful? Care to share?

* "The Big Crunch" is a hypothetical end to the cosmos as we know it, premised on the notion that if the Big Bang introduced [this cycle of] our cosmos, what will end it is gravitation pulling the contents of the cosmos back together into a singularity.

 

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"A stitch in time saves 9."

 

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aphorism: One bad apple spoils the barrel.

 

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"The sky's the limit."

No it isn't.

 

[Shiftless2]

"A penny saved is a penny earned." A notion promoting thrift.

If you take income taxes into account it should be "A penny saved is two pennies earned". After all, if someone pays no income tax they have to earn $10 in order to purchase a ten dollar item. However, someone in a 50% tax bracket has to earn $20 in order to purchase that same item.

"Don't count your chickens before they've hatched." A useful standard for anyone that's ever bought a lottery ticket.

Had a discussion about this with a stockbroker friend - he made a comment about winning the lottery isn't exactly the best way to plan for your future. I did point out to him that is the only way the average Joe is going to end up with a seven digit bank balance.

On a related note, way back when I dated a young lady who worked in the head office of one of the lottery corporations - she said that they'd received phone calls from people who were convinced that there is something wrong. After all, they'd bought a ticket every week and hadn't won yet.

And I do remember when the 6/49 lottery was first introduced - I was a math grad student at the time and happened to be in the department office when someone called in asking "how many ways are there to choose 6 numbers from 49 numbers when order doesn't matter" - the answer is {(49!)/[(43!)x(6!)]}. And if you do the arithmetic that works out to about 14 million. Have to admit that the lottery had only been announced the day before and I hadn't seen the news yet so at the time I had not idea why he was asking. However, once I heard about the lottery I figured that he wanted to know how many tickets he'd have to buy in order to be sure that he had the winning ticket.

 

[sear]

If you take income taxes into account it should be "A penny saved is two pennies earned". Benjaminless2

We earn it, they spend it. What could possibly go wrong ?!

"Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." Benjamin Franklin

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets. Will Rogers