01c. 1981 ADIf you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
02c. 1981 ADAs humans, we have invented lots of useful kinds of lie. As well as lies-to-children ('as much as they can understand') there are lies-to-bosses ('as much as they need to know') lies-to-patients ('they won't worry about what they don't know') and, for all sorts of reasons, lies-to-ourselves. Lies-to-children is simply a prevalent and necessary kind of lie. Universities are very familiar with bright, qualified school-leavers who arrive and then go into shock on finding that biology or physics isn't quite what they've been taught so far. 'Yes, but you needed to understand that,' they are told, 'so that now we can tell you why it isn't exactly true.' Discworld teachers know this, and use it to demonstrate why universities are truly storehouses of knowledge: students arrive from school confident that they know very nearly everything, and they leave years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? Into the university, of course, where it is carefully dried and stored.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
03c. 1981 AD...it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
04c. 1981 ADGetting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
05c. 1981 ADShe got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
06c. 1981 ADShe was not an unkind woman, despite a lifetime of being gently dried out on the stove of education, but she was conscientious and a stickler for propriety and thought she knew how this sort of thing should go and was vaguely annoyed that it wasn't going.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
07c. 1981 ADBut she’s going to have a lot of problems."THAT’S WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT. SO I’M TOLD. I WOULDN’T KNOW, OF COURSE."What about reincarnation?"Death hesitated.YOU WOULDN’T LIKE IT, he said. TAKE IT FROM ME."I’ve heard that some people do it all the time."YOU’VE GOT TO BE TRAINED TO IT. YOU’VE GOT TO START OFF SMALL AND WORK UP. YOU’VE NO IDEA HOW HORRIBLE IT IS TO BE AN ANT."It’s bad?"YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE IT. AND WITH YOUR KARMA AN ANT IS TOO MUCH TO EXPECT.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
08c. 1981 ADI'm trying to remember how you tell the time by looking at the sun." -"I should leave it for a while, it's too bright to see the numbers at the moment.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
10c. 1981 ADTime was something that largely happened to other people; he viewed it in the same way that people on the shore viewed the sea. It was big and it was out there, and sometimes it was an invigorating thing to dip a toe into, but you couldn't live in it all the time. Besides, it always made his skin wrinkle.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
11c. 1981 ADThe calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down, not up. No-one knows why, but it might not be a good idea to hang around and find out.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
14c. 1981 ADThe female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord." Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
15c. 1981 ADPeople who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
17c. 1981 ADWell, child? Aren't you going to try to turn me into some kind of unspeakable creature?I don't think I shall bother, madam, seeing as you are making such a good job of it yourself!Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
18c. 1981 ADIt wasn't that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
20c. 1981 ADAdventure! People talked about the idea as if it were something worthwhile, rather than a mess of bad food, no sleep and strange people inexplicably trying to stick pointed objects in bits of you.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
21c. 1981 ADShe wore so much thick white makeup in order to conceal her naturally rosy complexion that if she turned around suddenly her face would probably end up on the back of her head.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
22c. 1981 ADYou're not going to tell me they built fifty-foot-high killer golems, are you?""Only a man would think of that.It's our job," said Moist. "If you don't think of fifty-foot-high killer golems first, someone else will.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
23c. 1981 ADThe elevator shaft was a kind of heat sink. Hot food was cold by the time it arrived. Cold food got colder. No one knew what would happen to ice cream, but it would probably involve some rewriting of the laws of thermodynamics.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
24c. 1981 ADJust to keep the bad dreams at bay, she took a swig out of a bottle that smelled of apples and happy brain-death.Terry Pratchett / quote ↗
