Quotes from Ponder Stibbons
'Any relation to Sobriety Ogg?’
‘He was my dad, sir.’
‘Good grief. Old Sobriety’s son? How is 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)
'But look,’ said Ponder, ‘the graveyards are full of people who rushed in bravely but unwisely.’
‘Ook.’
‘What’d he say?’ said the Bursar, passing briefly through reality on his way somewhere else.
‘I think he said, “Sooner or later the graveyards are full of everybody”,’ said Ponder. (LL)
'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)
'... 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)
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)
'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)
Ponder was a great believer in logic, in the face of all local evidence ... (H)
... meddle first, understand later. You had to meddle a bit before you had anything to try to understand. And the thing was never, ever to go back and hide in the Lavatory of Unreason. You have to try to get your mind around the Universe before you give it a twist. (IT)
Ponder Stibbons was one of those unfortunate people cursed with the belief that if only he found out enough things about the universe it would all, somehow, make sense. (LC)
'Well, I for one have never believed all that business about dead animals turning into stone,’said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘It’s against reason. What’s in it for them?’
‘So how do you explain fossils, then?’ said Ponder.
‘Ah, you see, I don’t,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, with a triumphant smile. ‘It saves so much trouble in the long run.' (LC)
Ponder had been that kind of child. He still had all the pieces for every game he’d ever been given. Ponder had been the kind of boy who carefully reads the label on every Hogswatch present before opening it, and notes down in a small book who it is from, and has all the thank-you letters written by teatime. His parents had been impressed even then, realizing they had given birth to a child who would achieve great things or, perhaps, be hunted down by a righteous citizenry by the time he was ten. (LC)
He was spending more nights now watching Hex trawl the invisible writings for any hints. In theory, because of the nature of L-space, absolutely everything was available to him, but that only meant that it was more or less impossible to find whatever it was you were looking for, which is the purpose of computers. (LC)
Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all.
When something is tried, Ponder found, it often does turn out to be impossible very quickly, but it takes a little while for this to really be the case* – in effect, for the overworked laws of causality to hurry to the scene and pretend it has been impossible all along.
*In the case of cold fusion, this was longer than usual. (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)
'Laughing in the face of danger is not a survival strategy,’ said the god.
‘Oh, they don’t laugh,’ said Ponder gloomily. ‘They say things like, “you call that dangerous? It’s not a patch on the kind of danger you used to get when we were lads, eh, Senior Wrangler, what what?' (LC)
When he was a boy, Ponder Stibbons had imagined that wizards would be powerful democrats-gods able to change the whole world at the flick of a finger, and then he'd grown up and found that they were tiresome old men who worries about the state of their feet and, in harm's way, would even bicker about the origin of the phrase 'in harm's way'.
It had never struck him that evolution works in all kinds of ways. There were still quite deep scars in old buildings that showed what happened when you had the other kind of wizard. (LC)
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)
'I was rather thinking of problems associated with the thin air and low gravity,’ said Leonard. ‘That’s what the survivor of the Maria Pesto reported. But this afternoon I feel I can come up with a privy that, happily, utilises the thinner air of altitude to achieve the effect normally associated with gravity. Gentle suction is involved.’
Ponder nodded. He had a quick mind when it came to mechanical detail, and he’d already formed a mental picture. Now a mental eraser would be useful. (LH)
Right now he was present in his position as Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic, and his long-term purpose was to see that his department’s budget went through on the nod. (GP)
'That is a very graphic analogy which aids understanding wonderfully while being, strictly speaking, wrong in every possible way ...' (MM)
The Office of Master of The Traditions had fallen inevitably on Ponder Stibbons, who tended to get all the jobs that required someone who thought that things should happen on time and that numbers should add up. (UA)
Ponder Stibbons had once got one hundred percent in a prescience exam by getting there the previous day. (UA)
Ponder plunged on, because when you have dived off a cliff your only hope is to press for the abolition of gravity. (UA)
It was amazing, he thought, how people would argue against figures on no better basis than 'they must be wrong'.
'I'm sure the Bursar would not agree with those figures,' said the Senior Wrangler sourly.
'That is so,' said Ponder, 'but I'm afraid that is because he regards the decimal point as a nuisance'. (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)
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)
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)
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)
'I like that explanation,’ said Ridcully. ‘It is elegant, Mister Stibbons.’
‘It’s only a guess, sir.’
‘Good enough for physics,’ said Ridcully. (SODW)
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. (SODW)
'Absolute nothing is very unstable. It’s so desperate to be something.' (SODW)
He wanted, intensely, to believe in a world where logic worked. It was a matter of faith. (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)
'... nothing is certain, even if you know it is.' (TG)
His fellow wizards weren’t stupid, but you had to be careful to shape ideas to fit the holes in their heads. (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)
He was, Marjorie considered, one of the most useful people: a house-trained near-nerd, conscientious to the point of insanity but not any further, apparently. (JD)
‘He was my dad, sir.’
‘Good grief. Old Sobriety’s son? How is 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)
'But look,’ said Ponder, ‘the graveyards are full of people who rushed in bravely but unwisely.’
‘Ook.’
‘What’d he say?’ said the Bursar, passing briefly through reality on his way somewhere else.
‘I think he said, “Sooner or later the graveyards are full of everybody”,’ said Ponder. (LL)
'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)
'... 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)
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)
'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)
Ponder was a great believer in logic, in the face of all local evidence ... (H)
... meddle first, understand later. You had to meddle a bit before you had anything to try to understand. And the thing was never, ever to go back and hide in the Lavatory of Unreason. You have to try to get your mind around the Universe before you give it a twist. (IT)
Ponder Stibbons was one of those unfortunate people cursed with the belief that if only he found out enough things about the universe it would all, somehow, make sense. (LC)
'Well, I for one have never believed all that business about dead animals turning into stone,’said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘It’s against reason. What’s in it for them?’
‘So how do you explain fossils, then?’ said Ponder.
‘Ah, you see, I don’t,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, with a triumphant smile. ‘It saves so much trouble in the long run.' (LC)
Ponder had been that kind of child. He still had all the pieces for every game he’d ever been given. Ponder had been the kind of boy who carefully reads the label on every Hogswatch present before opening it, and notes down in a small book who it is from, and has all the thank-you letters written by teatime. His parents had been impressed even then, realizing they had given birth to a child who would achieve great things or, perhaps, be hunted down by a righteous citizenry by the time he was ten. (LC)
He was spending more nights now watching Hex trawl the invisible writings for any hints. In theory, because of the nature of L-space, absolutely everything was available to him, but that only meant that it was more or less impossible to find whatever it was you were looking for, which is the purpose of computers. (LC)
Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all.
When something is tried, Ponder found, it often does turn out to be impossible very quickly, but it takes a little while for this to really be the case* – in effect, for the overworked laws of causality to hurry to the scene and pretend it has been impossible all along.
*In the case of cold fusion, this was longer than usual. (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)
'Laughing in the face of danger is not a survival strategy,’ said the god.
‘Oh, they don’t laugh,’ said Ponder gloomily. ‘They say things like, “you call that dangerous? It’s not a patch on the kind of danger you used to get when we were lads, eh, Senior Wrangler, what what?' (LC)
When he was a boy, Ponder Stibbons had imagined that wizards would be powerful democrats-gods able to change the whole world at the flick of a finger, and then he'd grown up and found that they were tiresome old men who worries about the state of their feet and, in harm's way, would even bicker about the origin of the phrase 'in harm's way'.
It had never struck him that evolution works in all kinds of ways. There were still quite deep scars in old buildings that showed what happened when you had the other kind of wizard. (LC)
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)
'I was rather thinking of problems associated with the thin air and low gravity,’ said Leonard. ‘That’s what the survivor of the Maria Pesto reported. But this afternoon I feel I can come up with a privy that, happily, utilises the thinner air of altitude to achieve the effect normally associated with gravity. Gentle suction is involved.’
Ponder nodded. He had a quick mind when it came to mechanical detail, and he’d already formed a mental picture. Now a mental eraser would be useful. (LH)
Right now he was present in his position as Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic, and his long-term purpose was to see that his department’s budget went through on the nod. (GP)
'That is a very graphic analogy which aids understanding wonderfully while being, strictly speaking, wrong in every possible way ...' (MM)
The Office of Master of The Traditions had fallen inevitably on Ponder Stibbons, who tended to get all the jobs that required someone who thought that things should happen on time and that numbers should add up. (UA)
Ponder Stibbons had once got one hundred percent in a prescience exam by getting there the previous day. (UA)
Ponder plunged on, because when you have dived off a cliff your only hope is to press for the abolition of gravity. (UA)
It was amazing, he thought, how people would argue against figures on no better basis than 'they must be wrong'.
'I'm sure the Bursar would not agree with those figures,' said the Senior Wrangler sourly.
'That is so,' said Ponder, 'but I'm afraid that is because he regards the decimal point as a nuisance'. (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)
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)
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)
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)
'I like that explanation,’ said Ridcully. ‘It is elegant, Mister Stibbons.’
‘It’s only a guess, sir.’
‘Good enough for physics,’ said Ridcully. (SODW)
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. (SODW)
'Absolute nothing is very unstable. It’s so desperate to be something.' (SODW)
He wanted, intensely, to believe in a world where logic worked. It was a matter of faith. (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)
'... nothing is certain, even if you know it is.' (TG)
His fellow wizards weren’t stupid, but you had to be careful to shape ideas to fit the holes in their heads. (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)
He was, Marjorie considered, one of the most useful people: a house-trained near-nerd, conscientious to the point of insanity but not any further, apparently. (JD)