Quotes from Mustrum Ridcully
... Ridcully the Brown did speak to the birds. In fact he shouted at birds, and what he normally shouted was ‘Winged you, yer bastard!' (MP)
'A few twenty-mile runs and the Dean’d be a different man.’
‘Well, yes,’ said the Bursar. ‘He’d be dead.' (MP)
'That would be the senior masters, Master,’ said the Bursar. ‘I would say they are supremely fit, myself.’
‘Fit? The Dean looks like a man who’s swallered a bed!’
‘Ah, but Master,’ said the Bursar smiling indulgently, ‘the word ‘fit’, as I understand it, means ‘appropriate to a purpose,’ and I would say the body of the Dean is supremely appropriate to the purpose of sitting around all day and eating big heavy meals.' (MP)
The Archchancellor was not the kind of man who takes a special pleasure in being brusque and rude to women.
Or, to put it another way, he was brusque and rude to absolutely everyone, regardless of sex, which was an equality of a sort. (RM)
'Tell me,’ Ludmilla whispered to Ridcully, ‘is this how wizards usually behave?’
‘The Senior Wrangler is an amazingly fine example,’ said Ridcully. ‘Got the same urgent grasp of reality as a cardboard cut-out. Proud to have him on the team.' (RM)
Ridcully was simple-minded. This doesn’t mean stupid. It just meant that he could only think properly about things if he cut away all the complicated bits around the edges. (RM)
... it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn’t have been bothering you with in the first place. (RM)
There seemed to be more Mustrum Ridcully than one body could reasonably contain. (RM)
‘It can’t be intelligent, can it?’ said the Bursar.
'All it’s doing is moving around slowly and eating things,’ said the Dean.
‘Put a pointy hat on it and it’d be a faculty member,’ said the Archchancellor. (RM)
And Mustrum Ridcully, the current Archchancellor, liked to wander around the sleepy buildings, nodding to the servants and leaving little notes for his subordinates, usually designed for no other purpose than to make it absolutely clear that he was up and attending to the business of the day while they were still fast asleep. (LL)
Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, he kept them rare. (LL)
Ridcully never wasted time on small talk. It was always large talk or nothing. (LL)
'Are you really an outrageous liar?’
‘No.’
‘Why are you trying to rob coaches, then?’
‘I am afraid I was waylaid by bandits.’
‘But it says here,’ said Ridcully, ‘that you are a finest swordsman.’
‘I was outnumbered.’
‘How many of them were there?’
‘Three million.' (LL)
'Witches! Let me tell you about the witches round here-’
‘Our mum’s a witch,’ said Shawn conversationally, rummaging in the sack.
‘As fine a body of women as you could hope to meet,’ said Ridcully, with barely a hint of mental gear-clashing. ‘And not a bunch of interfering power-mad old crones at all, whatever anyone might say.' (LL)
'Any relation to Sobriety Ogg?’
‘He was my dad, sir.’
‘Good grief. Old Sobriety’s son? Howis the old devil?’
‘Dunno, sir, what with him being dead.’
‘Oh dear. How long ago?’
‘These past thirty years,’ said Shawn.
‘But you don’t look any older than twen-’ Ponder began. Ridcully elbowed him sharply in the ribcage.
‘This is the countryside,’ he hissed. ‘People do things differently here. And more often.' (LL)
‘You can’t cross the same river twice, Archchancellor,’ he said.
Ridcully stared at him.
‘Why not? This is a bridge.’ (LL)
‘I’m the head wizard now. I’ve only got to give an order and a thousand wizards will … uh disobey, come to think of it, or say “What?”, or start to argue. But they have to take notice.’ (LL)
... Ridcully believed that everything had come into being by chance or, in the particular case of the Dean, out of spite. (SM)
Ridcully smacked his lips loudly.
‘Ah, we certainly know what goes into good beer in Ankh-Morpork,’ he said.
The wizards nodded. They certainly did. That’s why they were drinking gin and tonic. (SM)
'Students?'
‘Er. Yes?’ said Ponder, backing away. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, this is a university…’
Ridcully scratched his ear. The man was right of course. You had to have some of the buggers around, there was no getting away from it. Personally, he avoided them whenever possible, as did the rest of the faculty, occasionally running the other way or hiding behind doors whenever they saw them. The Lecturer in Recent Runes had been known to lock himself in his wardrobe rather than take a tutorial. (SM)
Ridcully was beginning to show certain signs. If he had been a volcano, natives living nearby would be looking for a handy virgin. (SM)
Like most people with no grasp whatsoever of real economics, Mustrum Ridcully equated 'proper financial control' with the counting of paperclips. (H)
Crash hefted his guitar and played a chord.
‘My word!’ said Ridcully.
‘Sir?’
‘That sounded exactly like a cat trying to go to the lavatory through a sewn-up bum.' (SM)
'... well if you could get music in boxes you wouldn’t need musicians any more.’
Ridcully hesitated. There was a lot to be said for the idea. A world without musicians had a certain appeal. (SM)
The Archchancellor polished his staff as he walked along. It was a particularly good one, six feet long and quite magical. Not that he used magic very much. In his experience, anything that couldn’t be disposed of with a couple of whacks from six feet of oak was probably immune to magic as well. (SM)
'Oh no,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, pushing his chair back. ‘Not that. That’s meddling with things we don’t understand.’
‘Well we are wizards,’ said Ridcully. ‘We’re supposed to meddle with things we don’t understand. If we hung around waitin’ till we understood things we’d never get anything done.' (IT)
'Am I alone in thinking, by the way, that it doesn’t add to the status of the University to have an ape on the faculty?’
‘Yes,’ said Ridcully flatly. ‘You are. We’ve got the only librarian who can rip off your arm with his leg. People respect that.' (IT)
'Besides…where Rincewind went’ – he lowered his voice – ‘trouble followed behind.’
Ridcully noticed that the wizards drew a little closer together.
‘Sounds all right to me,’ he said. ‘Best place for trouble, behind. You certainly don’t want it in front.' (IT)
It was possible, if you kept on talking at the Archchancellor long enough, that some facts might squeeze through. (IT)
'You’re all missin’ the point. He survives. You keep on tellin’ me he’s had all these adventures and he’s still alive.’
‘What do you mean? He’s got scars all over him!’
‘My point exactly, Dean. Most of ‘em on his back, too. He leaves trouble behind. Someone Up There smiles on him.’
Rincewind winced. He had always been aware that Someone Up There was doing something on him. He’d never considered it was smiling. (IT)
Ridcully assumed that anything people had time to write down couldn’t be important. (IT)
'Round everyone up. My study. Ten minutes,’ said Ridcully. He was a great believer in this approach. A less direct Archchancellor would have wandered around looking for everyone. His policy was to find one person and make their life difficult until everything happened the way he wanted it to.*
*A policy adopted by almost all managers and several notable gods. (IT)
'Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.' (H)
‘I am not losing my hair!’ snapped the Dean. ‘It is just very finely spaced.’
‘Half on your head and half on your hairbrush,’ said the Lecturer of Recent Runes.
‘No sense in bein’ bashful about goin’ bald, said Ridcully evenly. ‘Anyway, you know what they say about bald men, Dean.’
‘Yes, they say, “Look at him, he’s got no hair,”’ said the Lecturer of Recent Runes. (H)
'Of course, Hex doesn’t actually think. Not as such. It just appears to be thinking.’
‘Ah. Like the Dean,’ said Ridcully. ‘Any chance of fitting a brain like this into the Dean’s head?’
‘It does weigh ten tons, Archchancellor.’
‘Ah. Really? Oh. Quite a large crowbar would be in order, then.' (H)
'That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?' (H)
'How do we usually test stuff?’
‘Generally we ask for student volunteers,’ said the Dean.
‘What happens if we don’t get any?’
‘We give it to them anyway.’
‘Isn’t that a bit unethical?’
‘Not if we don’t tell them, Archchancellor.’
‘Ah, good point.' (H)
... people like Ridcully are never, ever embarrassed about anything, although often people are embarrassed on their behalf. (H)
Mustrum Ridcully believed that knowledge could be acquired by shouting at people ... (H)
'He’s had a near-death experience!'
'We all have. It’s called “living”,’ said the Archchancellor shortly. (H)
'Beats me how you fellows remember how to do all this stuff,’ said Ridcully, still watching him with what Ponder considered to be amused interest.
‘Oh, it’s largely intuitive, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. ‘Obviously you have to spend a lot of time learning it first, though.' (H)
Mustrum Ridcully was notorious for not trying to understand things if there was anyone around to do it for him. (LC)
'You know I’ve always wanted a paperless office-'
'Yes, Archchancellor, that’s why you hide it all in the cupboards and throw it out the window at night.' (LC)
'But we’re a university! We have to have a library!’ said Ridcully. ‘It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we
didn’t go into the Library?’
‘Students,’ said the Senior Wrangler morosely. (LC)
Ridcully felt there was indeed room at the top, and he was occupying all of it. (LC)
Sometimes you had to turn facts in several directions until you found the right way to fit them in Ridcully's head. (LC)
Unfortunately, like many people who are instinctively bad at something, the Archchancellor prided himself on how good at it he was. Ridcully was to management what King Herrod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association. His mental approach to it could be visualized as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled ‘Me, who does the telling’ and, connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled ‘Everyone else.’
Until now this had worked quite well, because, although Ridcully was an impossible manager, the University was impossible to manage and so everything worked seamlessly. (LC)
The worst thing about losing your temper with Mustrum Ridcully was that he never noticed when you did. (LC)
'How did you work that out so exactly, Mr Stibbons?’
‘I, er…’ Ponder felt the eyes of the wizards on him. ‘I-’ He stopped. ‘It was a lucky guess, sir.’
The wizards relaxed. They were extremely uneasy with cleverness, but lucky guessing was what being a wizard was all about.
‘Well done, that man,’ said Ridcully, nodding. ‘Wipe your forehead, Mr Stibbons, you’ve got away with it again.' (LC)
'We’ll have to be very careful to keep an eye open for unusual behaviour.’
‘Among wizards?’ said Ridcully. ‘Mister Stibbons, unusual behaviour is perfectly ordinary for wizards.’
‘People acting out of character, then!’ Ponder shouted. ‘Talking sense for two minutes together, perhaps!' (LC)
Ridcully told jokes like a bullfrog did accountancy. They never added up. (LC)
'Thou Must Go from This Place Lest I Visit Thee with Boils!’
‘Really? Most people would bring a bottle of wine,’ said Ridcully. (LC)
Like his wizardly brother, Archchancellor Mustrum, he didn’t like to bother himself with patently silly questions. Both gods and magic required solid, sensible men, and the brothers Ridcully were solid as rocks. And, in some respects, as sensible. (TT)
'It’ll end in trouble, my lord,’ said Ridcully. He’d found it a good general comment in practically any debate. Besides, it was so often true.
Lord Vetinari sighed. ‘In my experience, practically everything does,’ he said. ‘That is the nature of things. All we can do is sing as we go.' (TT)
Archchancellor Ridcully decided that the crew needed to be trained. Ponder Stibbons pointed out that they were going into the completely unexpected, and Ridcully ruled therefore that they should be given some unexpected training. (LH)
'Thank you, Archchancellor, but I'm far too busy for you to help me,' he said. (LH)
Ponder was a clear logical thinker who, in times of mental confusion, fell back on reason and honesty, which, when dealing with an angry Archchancellor, were to use the proper academic term, unhelpful. And he neglected to think strategically, always a mistake when talking to fellow academics, and as a result made the mistake of employing, as at this point, common sense. (UA)
'If all else fails, we will find volunteers from the student body,' said Ridcully.
'Corpse might be a better word.' (UA)
'Are you seriously suggesting that we give out degrees for mere physical prowess?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
'No, of course not. I am seriously suggesting that we give out degrees for extreme physical prowess.' (UA)
'University Council at the time took the decent view that it might be the moment for a leader who was not stupid, mad or dead. Admittedly, most of these are not exactly qualifications in the normal sense, but I like to think that the skill of leadership, tactics and creative cheating that I learned on the river stood me in good stead.' (UA)
'In any case the rules don't concern us at this point. We have to play the game in any eventuality and so we will abide by them in the best traditions of sportsmanship until we have worked out where they may be most usefully broken to our advantage'. (UA)
Truth is female, since truth is beauty rather than handsomeness, this Ridcully reflected as the Council grumbled in, would certainly explain the saying that a lie could run around the world before Truth has got its, correction, her boots on, since she would have to choose which pair – the idea that any woman in a position to choose would have just one pair of boots being beyond rational belief. (UA)
'As a wizard I must tell you that words have power'.
'As a politician I must tell you I already know'. (UA)
'Cometh the hour, cometh the … whatever. General comethness, perhaps.' (UA)
'There are more things in Heaven and Disc than are dreamed of in our philosophies.'
'I expect so, sir. I don't have many things in my philosophies.' (UA)
'Now, I am concluding this meeting, although what it has in fact concluded I shall decide later.' (UA)
'And you are telling me I'm wrong. Are you?'
'I would rather you thought of me as suggesting a way in which you could be even more right.' (UA)
'… you know how it is with boundaries,' Ridcully mumbled. 'You look at what's on the other side and you realize why there was a boundary in the first place.' (UA)
'Of course we've all passed a lot of water over the bridge since then …' (UA)
'I've got a huge workload!'
'Delegate!'
'You know I'm hopeless at delegating, sir!'
'Then delegate the job of delegating to someone who isn't!' (UA)
'Pick the teams alternately so one of you ends up with the weird kid and the other with the fat kid. Some of the fastest mathematics of all time has been achieved by team captains trying not to end up with the weird kid …' (UA)
'University Council at the time took the decent view that it might be the moment for a leader who was not stupid, mad or dead. Admittedly, most of these are not exactly qualifications in the normal sense, but I like to think that the skill of leadership, tactics and creative cheating that I learned on the river stood me in good stead.' (UA)
Some questions should not be asked. However, someone always does.
‘How does it work?’ said Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, the Master of Unseen University.
This was the kind of question that Ponder Stibbons hated almost as much as ‘How much will it cost?’ They were two of the hardest questions a researcher ever had to face. (SODW)
'Perhaps you would care to say a few words, sir?’ said Ponder.
‘Yes.’ Ridcully looked thoughtful for a moment, and then brightened up. ‘Let’s get this over quickly, and have lunch.' (SODW)
'Ah, I’ve got an idea!’ said the Dean, beaming. ‘We can get Hex to reverse the thaumic flow in the cthonic matrix of the optimized bi-direction octagonate, can’t we?’
‘Well, that’s the opinion of four glasses of sherry,’ said the Archchancellor briskly, to break the ensuing silence. 'However, if I may express a preference, something that isn’t complete gibberish would be more welcome next time, please.' (SODW)
'He always thinks everything has to mean something,’ said Ridcully, who generally took the view that trying to find any deep meaning to events was like trying to find reflections in a mirror: you always succeeded, but you didn’t learn anything new. (SODW)
'I like that explanation,’ said Ridcully. ‘It is elegant, Mister Stibbons.’
‘It’s only a guess, sir.’
‘Good enough for physics,’ said Ridcully. (SODW)
'I don’t like it. It’s too quiet.’
‘No sir, no sir,’ said Rincewind. ‘That’s not the time not to like it. The time not to like it is when it’s suddenly as noisy as all hell, sir.' (TG)
'In an unknown situation always hope for savages. They tend to be quite polite and hospitable provided you don’t make any sudden moves or eat the wrong sort of animals.’
‘What sort of animals?’ said Ridcully.
‘Taboo, sir. They tend to be related. Or something.’
‘That sounds rather…sophisticated,’said Ponder suspiciously. Savages often are,’ said Rincewind. ‘It’s the civilised people that give you trouble. They always want to drag you off somewhere and ask you unsophisticated questions.' (TG)
'Art’s for slackers!' (TG)
'Bein’ around for millions of years is not an achievement. Even lumps of stone can manage it.' (TG)
Ridcully did not like committee business. He certainly did not like any other business. (DW)
'We are supposed to develop questioning minds, you know,’ someone muttered.
‘Yes, but not regarding university policy!’ said Ridcully. (DW)
'We’ve kept all this very simple so that even professors can understand!' (DW)
'Magic is basically just movin’ stuff around,’ said Ridcully. (DW)
'Interestingly, he does want to know if we have an ethics committee,' said Stibbons.
'Since we don't have any, I don't think we need one,' said Ridcully. (CCODD)
'… trying to be nice to students means you end up with courses like comparative fretwork and graduates who think 'thank you' is one word and can look at a sign sayin' 'Human Resources Department' without detecting a whiff of brimstone.' (CCODD)
'… I don't think it was for reading. It was for having written …' (CCODD)
'I administer, Dean,' said Ridcully, calmly.
'Then we must be doing something, otherwise you'd have nothing to administrate.'
'That comment strikes at the very heart of the bureaucratic principle, Dean, and I shall ignore it.' (CCODD)
‘… all things must strive, and because we know how ignorant we actually are then we must strive hardest of all.’ (JD)
‘Those who wish to tell us how we should think, and sometimes that we shouldn’t even think at all, must be ignored.’ (JD)
... he knew how to soothe, but he also knew when to twinkle and - more importantly perhaps - he also knew when not to twinkle. (JD)
'A few twenty-mile runs and the Dean’d be a different man.’
‘Well, yes,’ said the Bursar. ‘He’d be dead.' (MP)
'That would be the senior masters, Master,’ said the Bursar. ‘I would say they are supremely fit, myself.’
‘Fit? The Dean looks like a man who’s swallered a bed!’
‘Ah, but Master,’ said the Bursar smiling indulgently, ‘the word ‘fit’, as I understand it, means ‘appropriate to a purpose,’ and I would say the body of the Dean is supremely appropriate to the purpose of sitting around all day and eating big heavy meals.' (MP)
The Archchancellor was not the kind of man who takes a special pleasure in being brusque and rude to women.
Or, to put it another way, he was brusque and rude to absolutely everyone, regardless of sex, which was an equality of a sort. (RM)
'Tell me,’ Ludmilla whispered to Ridcully, ‘is this how wizards usually behave?’
‘The Senior Wrangler is an amazingly fine example,’ said Ridcully. ‘Got the same urgent grasp of reality as a cardboard cut-out. Proud to have him on the team.' (RM)
Ridcully was simple-minded. This doesn’t mean stupid. It just meant that he could only think properly about things if he cut away all the complicated bits around the edges. (RM)
... it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn’t have been bothering you with in the first place. (RM)
There seemed to be more Mustrum Ridcully than one body could reasonably contain. (RM)
‘It can’t be intelligent, can it?’ said the Bursar.
'All it’s doing is moving around slowly and eating things,’ said the Dean.
‘Put a pointy hat on it and it’d be a faculty member,’ said the Archchancellor. (RM)
And Mustrum Ridcully, the current Archchancellor, liked to wander around the sleepy buildings, nodding to the servants and leaving little notes for his subordinates, usually designed for no other purpose than to make it absolutely clear that he was up and attending to the business of the day while they were still fast asleep. (LL)
Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, he kept them rare. (LL)
Ridcully never wasted time on small talk. It was always large talk or nothing. (LL)
'Are you really an outrageous liar?’
‘No.’
‘Why are you trying to rob coaches, then?’
‘I am afraid I was waylaid by bandits.’
‘But it says here,’ said Ridcully, ‘that you are a finest swordsman.’
‘I was outnumbered.’
‘How many of them were there?’
‘Three million.' (LL)
'Witches! Let me tell you about the witches round here-’
‘Our mum’s a witch,’ said Shawn conversationally, rummaging in the sack.
‘As fine a body of women as you could hope to meet,’ said Ridcully, with barely a hint of mental gear-clashing. ‘And not a bunch of interfering power-mad old crones at all, whatever anyone might say.' (LL)
'Any relation to Sobriety Ogg?’
‘He was my dad, sir.’
‘Good grief. Old Sobriety’s son? Howis the old devil?’
‘Dunno, sir, what with him being dead.’
‘Oh dear. How long ago?’
‘These past thirty years,’ said Shawn.
‘But you don’t look any older than twen-’ Ponder began. Ridcully elbowed him sharply in the ribcage.
‘This is the countryside,’ he hissed. ‘People do things differently here. And more often.' (LL)
‘You can’t cross the same river twice, Archchancellor,’ he said.
Ridcully stared at him.
‘Why not? This is a bridge.’ (LL)
‘I’m the head wizard now. I’ve only got to give an order and a thousand wizards will … uh disobey, come to think of it, or say “What?”, or start to argue. But they have to take notice.’ (LL)
... Ridcully believed that everything had come into being by chance or, in the particular case of the Dean, out of spite. (SM)
Ridcully smacked his lips loudly.
‘Ah, we certainly know what goes into good beer in Ankh-Morpork,’ he said.
The wizards nodded. They certainly did. That’s why they were drinking gin and tonic. (SM)
'Students?'
‘Er. Yes?’ said Ponder, backing away. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, this is a university…’
Ridcully scratched his ear. The man was right of course. You had to have some of the buggers around, there was no getting away from it. Personally, he avoided them whenever possible, as did the rest of the faculty, occasionally running the other way or hiding behind doors whenever they saw them. The Lecturer in Recent Runes had been known to lock himself in his wardrobe rather than take a tutorial. (SM)
Ridcully was beginning to show certain signs. If he had been a volcano, natives living nearby would be looking for a handy virgin. (SM)
Like most people with no grasp whatsoever of real economics, Mustrum Ridcully equated 'proper financial control' with the counting of paperclips. (H)
Crash hefted his guitar and played a chord.
‘My word!’ said Ridcully.
‘Sir?’
‘That sounded exactly like a cat trying to go to the lavatory through a sewn-up bum.' (SM)
'... well if you could get music in boxes you wouldn’t need musicians any more.’
Ridcully hesitated. There was a lot to be said for the idea. A world without musicians had a certain appeal. (SM)
The Archchancellor polished his staff as he walked along. It was a particularly good one, six feet long and quite magical. Not that he used magic very much. In his experience, anything that couldn’t be disposed of with a couple of whacks from six feet of oak was probably immune to magic as well. (SM)
'Oh no,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, pushing his chair back. ‘Not that. That’s meddling with things we don’t understand.’
‘Well we are wizards,’ said Ridcully. ‘We’re supposed to meddle with things we don’t understand. If we hung around waitin’ till we understood things we’d never get anything done.' (IT)
'Am I alone in thinking, by the way, that it doesn’t add to the status of the University to have an ape on the faculty?’
‘Yes,’ said Ridcully flatly. ‘You are. We’ve got the only librarian who can rip off your arm with his leg. People respect that.' (IT)
'Besides…where Rincewind went’ – he lowered his voice – ‘trouble followed behind.’
Ridcully noticed that the wizards drew a little closer together.
‘Sounds all right to me,’ he said. ‘Best place for trouble, behind. You certainly don’t want it in front.' (IT)
It was possible, if you kept on talking at the Archchancellor long enough, that some facts might squeeze through. (IT)
'You’re all missin’ the point. He survives. You keep on tellin’ me he’s had all these adventures and he’s still alive.’
‘What do you mean? He’s got scars all over him!’
‘My point exactly, Dean. Most of ‘em on his back, too. He leaves trouble behind. Someone Up There smiles on him.’
Rincewind winced. He had always been aware that Someone Up There was doing something on him. He’d never considered it was smiling. (IT)
Ridcully assumed that anything people had time to write down couldn’t be important. (IT)
'Round everyone up. My study. Ten minutes,’ said Ridcully. He was a great believer in this approach. A less direct Archchancellor would have wandered around looking for everyone. His policy was to find one person and make their life difficult until everything happened the way he wanted it to.*
*A policy adopted by almost all managers and several notable gods. (IT)
'Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.' (H)
‘I am not losing my hair!’ snapped the Dean. ‘It is just very finely spaced.’
‘Half on your head and half on your hairbrush,’ said the Lecturer of Recent Runes.
‘No sense in bein’ bashful about goin’ bald, said Ridcully evenly. ‘Anyway, you know what they say about bald men, Dean.’
‘Yes, they say, “Look at him, he’s got no hair,”’ said the Lecturer of Recent Runes. (H)
'Of course, Hex doesn’t actually think. Not as such. It just appears to be thinking.’
‘Ah. Like the Dean,’ said Ridcully. ‘Any chance of fitting a brain like this into the Dean’s head?’
‘It does weigh ten tons, Archchancellor.’
‘Ah. Really? Oh. Quite a large crowbar would be in order, then.' (H)
'That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?' (H)
'How do we usually test stuff?’
‘Generally we ask for student volunteers,’ said the Dean.
‘What happens if we don’t get any?’
‘We give it to them anyway.’
‘Isn’t that a bit unethical?’
‘Not if we don’t tell them, Archchancellor.’
‘Ah, good point.' (H)
... people like Ridcully are never, ever embarrassed about anything, although often people are embarrassed on their behalf. (H)
Mustrum Ridcully believed that knowledge could be acquired by shouting at people ... (H)
'He’s had a near-death experience!'
'We all have. It’s called “living”,’ said the Archchancellor shortly. (H)
'Beats me how you fellows remember how to do all this stuff,’ said Ridcully, still watching him with what Ponder considered to be amused interest.
‘Oh, it’s largely intuitive, Archchancellor,’ said Ponder. ‘Obviously you have to spend a lot of time learning it first, though.' (H)
Mustrum Ridcully was notorious for not trying to understand things if there was anyone around to do it for him. (LC)
'You know I’ve always wanted a paperless office-'
'Yes, Archchancellor, that’s why you hide it all in the cupboards and throw it out the window at night.' (LC)
'But we’re a university! We have to have a library!’ said Ridcully. ‘It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we
didn’t go into the Library?’
‘Students,’ said the Senior Wrangler morosely. (LC)
Ridcully felt there was indeed room at the top, and he was occupying all of it. (LC)
Sometimes you had to turn facts in several directions until you found the right way to fit them in Ridcully's head. (LC)
Unfortunately, like many people who are instinctively bad at something, the Archchancellor prided himself on how good at it he was. Ridcully was to management what King Herrod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association. His mental approach to it could be visualized as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled ‘Me, who does the telling’ and, connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled ‘Everyone else.’
Until now this had worked quite well, because, although Ridcully was an impossible manager, the University was impossible to manage and so everything worked seamlessly. (LC)
The worst thing about losing your temper with Mustrum Ridcully was that he never noticed when you did. (LC)
'How did you work that out so exactly, Mr Stibbons?’
‘I, er…’ Ponder felt the eyes of the wizards on him. ‘I-’ He stopped. ‘It was a lucky guess, sir.’
The wizards relaxed. They were extremely uneasy with cleverness, but lucky guessing was what being a wizard was all about.
‘Well done, that man,’ said Ridcully, nodding. ‘Wipe your forehead, Mr Stibbons, you’ve got away with it again.' (LC)
'We’ll have to be very careful to keep an eye open for unusual behaviour.’
‘Among wizards?’ said Ridcully. ‘Mister Stibbons, unusual behaviour is perfectly ordinary for wizards.’
‘People acting out of character, then!’ Ponder shouted. ‘Talking sense for two minutes together, perhaps!' (LC)
Ridcully told jokes like a bullfrog did accountancy. They never added up. (LC)
'Thou Must Go from This Place Lest I Visit Thee with Boils!’
‘Really? Most people would bring a bottle of wine,’ said Ridcully. (LC)
Like his wizardly brother, Archchancellor Mustrum, he didn’t like to bother himself with patently silly questions. Both gods and magic required solid, sensible men, and the brothers Ridcully were solid as rocks. And, in some respects, as sensible. (TT)
'It’ll end in trouble, my lord,’ said Ridcully. He’d found it a good general comment in practically any debate. Besides, it was so often true.
Lord Vetinari sighed. ‘In my experience, practically everything does,’ he said. ‘That is the nature of things. All we can do is sing as we go.' (TT)
Archchancellor Ridcully decided that the crew needed to be trained. Ponder Stibbons pointed out that they were going into the completely unexpected, and Ridcully ruled therefore that they should be given some unexpected training. (LH)
'Thank you, Archchancellor, but I'm far too busy for you to help me,' he said. (LH)
Ponder was a clear logical thinker who, in times of mental confusion, fell back on reason and honesty, which, when dealing with an angry Archchancellor, were to use the proper academic term, unhelpful. And he neglected to think strategically, always a mistake when talking to fellow academics, and as a result made the mistake of employing, as at this point, common sense. (UA)
'If all else fails, we will find volunteers from the student body,' said Ridcully.
'Corpse might be a better word.' (UA)
'Are you seriously suggesting that we give out degrees for mere physical prowess?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies.
'No, of course not. I am seriously suggesting that we give out degrees for extreme physical prowess.' (UA)
'University Council at the time took the decent view that it might be the moment for a leader who was not stupid, mad or dead. Admittedly, most of these are not exactly qualifications in the normal sense, but I like to think that the skill of leadership, tactics and creative cheating that I learned on the river stood me in good stead.' (UA)
'In any case the rules don't concern us at this point. We have to play the game in any eventuality and so we will abide by them in the best traditions of sportsmanship until we have worked out where they may be most usefully broken to our advantage'. (UA)
Truth is female, since truth is beauty rather than handsomeness, this Ridcully reflected as the Council grumbled in, would certainly explain the saying that a lie could run around the world before Truth has got its, correction, her boots on, since she would have to choose which pair – the idea that any woman in a position to choose would have just one pair of boots being beyond rational belief. (UA)
'As a wizard I must tell you that words have power'.
'As a politician I must tell you I already know'. (UA)
'Cometh the hour, cometh the … whatever. General comethness, perhaps.' (UA)
'There are more things in Heaven and Disc than are dreamed of in our philosophies.'
'I expect so, sir. I don't have many things in my philosophies.' (UA)
'Now, I am concluding this meeting, although what it has in fact concluded I shall decide later.' (UA)
'And you are telling me I'm wrong. Are you?'
'I would rather you thought of me as suggesting a way in which you could be even more right.' (UA)
'… you know how it is with boundaries,' Ridcully mumbled. 'You look at what's on the other side and you realize why there was a boundary in the first place.' (UA)
'Of course we've all passed a lot of water over the bridge since then …' (UA)
'I've got a huge workload!'
'Delegate!'
'You know I'm hopeless at delegating, sir!'
'Then delegate the job of delegating to someone who isn't!' (UA)
'Pick the teams alternately so one of you ends up with the weird kid and the other with the fat kid. Some of the fastest mathematics of all time has been achieved by team captains trying not to end up with the weird kid …' (UA)
'University Council at the time took the decent view that it might be the moment for a leader who was not stupid, mad or dead. Admittedly, most of these are not exactly qualifications in the normal sense, but I like to think that the skill of leadership, tactics and creative cheating that I learned on the river stood me in good stead.' (UA)
Some questions should not be asked. However, someone always does.
‘How does it work?’ said Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, the Master of Unseen University.
This was the kind of question that Ponder Stibbons hated almost as much as ‘How much will it cost?’ They were two of the hardest questions a researcher ever had to face. (SODW)
'Perhaps you would care to say a few words, sir?’ said Ponder.
‘Yes.’ Ridcully looked thoughtful for a moment, and then brightened up. ‘Let’s get this over quickly, and have lunch.' (SODW)
'Ah, I’ve got an idea!’ said the Dean, beaming. ‘We can get Hex to reverse the thaumic flow in the cthonic matrix of the optimized bi-direction octagonate, can’t we?’
‘Well, that’s the opinion of four glasses of sherry,’ said the Archchancellor briskly, to break the ensuing silence. 'However, if I may express a preference, something that isn’t complete gibberish would be more welcome next time, please.' (SODW)
'He always thinks everything has to mean something,’ said Ridcully, who generally took the view that trying to find any deep meaning to events was like trying to find reflections in a mirror: you always succeeded, but you didn’t learn anything new. (SODW)
'I like that explanation,’ said Ridcully. ‘It is elegant, Mister Stibbons.’
‘It’s only a guess, sir.’
‘Good enough for physics,’ said Ridcully. (SODW)
'I don’t like it. It’s too quiet.’
‘No sir, no sir,’ said Rincewind. ‘That’s not the time not to like it. The time not to like it is when it’s suddenly as noisy as all hell, sir.' (TG)
'In an unknown situation always hope for savages. They tend to be quite polite and hospitable provided you don’t make any sudden moves or eat the wrong sort of animals.’
‘What sort of animals?’ said Ridcully.
‘Taboo, sir. They tend to be related. Or something.’
‘That sounds rather…sophisticated,’said Ponder suspiciously. Savages often are,’ said Rincewind. ‘It’s the civilised people that give you trouble. They always want to drag you off somewhere and ask you unsophisticated questions.' (TG)
'Art’s for slackers!' (TG)
'Bein’ around for millions of years is not an achievement. Even lumps of stone can manage it.' (TG)
Ridcully did not like committee business. He certainly did not like any other business. (DW)
'We are supposed to develop questioning minds, you know,’ someone muttered.
‘Yes, but not regarding university policy!’ said Ridcully. (DW)
'We’ve kept all this very simple so that even professors can understand!' (DW)
'Magic is basically just movin’ stuff around,’ said Ridcully. (DW)
'Interestingly, he does want to know if we have an ethics committee,' said Stibbons.
'Since we don't have any, I don't think we need one,' said Ridcully. (CCODD)
'… trying to be nice to students means you end up with courses like comparative fretwork and graduates who think 'thank you' is one word and can look at a sign sayin' 'Human Resources Department' without detecting a whiff of brimstone.' (CCODD)
'… I don't think it was for reading. It was for having written …' (CCODD)
'I administer, Dean,' said Ridcully, calmly.
'Then we must be doing something, otherwise you'd have nothing to administrate.'
'That comment strikes at the very heart of the bureaucratic principle, Dean, and I shall ignore it.' (CCODD)
‘… all things must strive, and because we know how ignorant we actually are then we must strive hardest of all.’ (JD)
‘Those who wish to tell us how we should think, and sometimes that we shouldn’t even think at all, must be ignored.’ (JD)
... he knew how to soothe, but he also knew when to twinkle and - more importantly perhaps - he also knew when not to twinkle. (JD)
