Rule 4 - Just Be This as Well

Rule #1 :

Stand up straight with your shoulders back

Rule #2 :

Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping

Rule #3 :

Make friends with people who want the best for you

Rule #4 :

Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today

Rule #5 :

Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them

Rule #6 :

Set your house in perfect order before you criticise The World

Rule #7 :

Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)

Rule #8 :

Tell The Truth – or, at least, don’t lie.

Rule #9

Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t

Rule #10 :

Be precise in your speech

Rule #11 : 

Do not bother children when they are skate-boarding

Rule #12 :

Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

This readout tells you where you're going,
This one tells you where you are
This one tells you where you were.

Bethany: 

Everything I am has been a lie.

Metatron: 

No, no, no! 

Knowing what you now know doesn't mean you're not who you were. 

You are Bethany Sloane - 

no one can take that away from you, not even God. 

All this means is a new definition of that identity. 

The incorporation of this new data into who you are. 

Be who you've always been. 

Just be this as well... from time to time.

INQUISITOR: 

You are a slimy, despicable, rat-hearted, green-discharge of a man, aren't you? 

RIMMER: 

Well... sort of, yes. 

INQUISITOR: 

So then, justify yourself! 

RIMMER: 

What else could I have been? 

My father was a half-crazed military failure, 

my mother was a bitch-queen from hell. 

My brothers had all the looks and talent. 

What did I have? 

Unmanageable hair and ingrowing toenails. 

Yes, I admit I'm nothing. 

But from what I started with - nothing is up. 

*****

CAT :

 I have given joy to the world because I have such a beautiful ass! 

Some might say I'm a pretty shallow guy. 

But a shallow guy, with a great ass!

*****

 INQUISITOR: 

Well Kryten, justify yourself. 

KRYTEN: 

I'm not sure I can. 

INQUISITOR: 

But surely your life is replete with good works. 

There can be few individuals who have lived a more selfless life. 

KRYTEN: 

But I am programmed to live unselfishly. 

And therefore, any good works I do come not out of fine motives but as a result of a series of binary commands I am compelled to obey. 

INQUISITOR: 

Well then, how can any mechanical justify himself? 

KRYTEN: 

Perhaps only if he attempted to break his programming and conduct his life according to a set of values he arrived at independently. 

INQUISITOR: 

Your argument invites deletion. 

KRYTEN: 

The rules are yours, not mine. 

INQUISITOR: 

Do you wish to be erased? 

KRYTEN: 

Well, I am programmed not to wish for anything. 

I serve. 

INQUISITOR: 

In a human, this behavior might be considered stubborn. 

KRYTEN: 

But I am not human - and neither are you. 

And it is not our place to judge them. 

I wonder why you do..?

*****

LISTER: 

Spin on it!

" No matter how good you are at something, or how you rank your accomplishments, there is someone out there who makes you look incompetent.

You’re a decent guitar player, but you’re not Jimmy Page or Jack White. You’re almost certainly not even going to rock your local pub. You’re a good cook, but there are many great chefs. Your mother’s recipe for fish heads and rice, no matter how celebrated in her village of origin, doesn’t cut it in these days of grapefruit foam and Scotch/tobacco ice-cream. Some Mafia don has a tackier yacht. Some obsessive CEO has a more complicated self-winding watch, kept in his more valuable mechanical hardwood-and-steel automatic self-winding watch case. 

Even the most stunning Hollywood actress eventually transforms into the Evil Queen, on eternal, paranoid watch for the new Snow White. And you? Your career is boring and pointless, your housekeeping skills are second-rate, your taste is appalling, you’re fatter than your friends, and everyone dreads your parties. Who cares if you are prime minister of Canada when someone else is the president of the United States?


Inside us dwells a critical internal voice and spirit that knows all this. It’s predisposed to make its noisy case. It condemns our mediocre efforts. It can be very difficult to quell. Worse, critics of its sort are necessary. There is no shortage of tasteless artists, tuneless musicians, poisonous cooks, bureaucratically-personality-disordered middle managers, hack novelists and tedious, ideology-ridden professors. Things and people differ importantly in their qualities. Awful music torments listeners everywhere. Poorly designed buildings crumble in earthquakes. Substandard automobiles kill their drivers when they crash. 

Failure is the price we pay for standards and, because mediocrity has consequences both real and harsh, standards are necessary.