What are the three most valuable pieces of proverbial advice you received from your father?

Mothers are constant streams of information about the practical matters of everyday living, but fathers seem to take a more philosophical view to advice-giving. What three pieces of advice given to you by your father do you consider to have been most valuable in your life?

For me, my list would be:

1) “Son, never pay for sex. There are enough women out that that will sleep with anyone or anything that you’ll never need to pay for it if you want it.” While this is literally true, I’ve also found it useful advice for a lot of other activities. No matter what it is that needs doing, from gardening to painting, I’ve found that someone, somewhere, enjoys doing it for the fun of it and I need not pay someone to assist me.

2) “If people have started to gather and you know there’s going to be a fight, don’t stand around and wait for it, don’t grab the guy and dance with him, just haul off and sucker punch him as hard as you can, right on the button.” Again, while this piece of advice has proven very useful when applied literally, I’ve found that it has application in many other areas of my life. When you know that conflict is inevitable, the proper course of action is to go instantly on the offensive without waiting or warning and land the hardest blow you possibly can before they realize what’s happening.

3) “You don’t have to win every fight, you just have to make sure you get a good one in so they remember you next time.” I lived in a tough neighbourhood, so I often came home with a fat lip or a black eye. My father would ask me, “Did you get a good one in?” If I said no, he’d turn on his heel and say, “Then I have no sympathy,” and walk away. As an activist, this advice has proven indispensable over and over again. The enemies I’m fighting – the police, the State, city council, capitalism – are all massively bigger and stronger than I am, with metric shit-tonnes more resources; but I needn’t defeat them. All I need to do is “get a good one in” and show them that there are easier pickings elsewhere. They think long and hard before picking a fight with me these days.