The Science of Discworld
Terry Pratchett
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Sometimes scientists change their minds. New developments cause a rethink. If this bothers you, consider how much damage is being done to the world by people for whom new developments do not cause a rethink.”
“Science is not about building a body of known ‘facts’. It is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good.”
“With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D and you still have the frog you started with.”
“As 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.”
“Wizards can put up with any amount of deprivation and discomfort, provided it is not happening to them.”
“It was easy to respect an invisible god. It was the ones that turned up everywhere, often drunk, that put people off.”
“Two student wizards were arguing vehemently, or at least repeatedly stating their point of view in a loud voice, which suffices for argument most of the time.”
“Ponder had invented a little system he'd called, in the privacy of his head, Lies-to-Wizards. It was for their own good, he told himself. There was no point in telling your bosses everything; they were busy men, they didn't want explanations. There was no point in burdening them. What they wanted was little stories that they felt they could understand, and then they'd go away and stop worrying.”
“Triboplasts played a crucial role in evolution, precisely because they did have internal organs, and in particular they could ingest food and excrete it. Their excreta became a major resource for other creatures; to get an interestingly complicated world, it is vitally important that shit happens.”
“Reproduction, in particular, is a wonderful method of getting round the difficulties of manufacturing a really complicated thing. Just build one that manufactures more of itself. The first one may be incredibly difficult – but all the rest come with no added effort.”
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Book Keywords:
science, teleology, inspirational, education, library, pastoral-care, perception, teacher, surrealism, academia, humor, lie-to-children, evolution, knowledge, university
