If you didn’t find some way of stopping it, people would go on asking questions. (WFM)
0 Comments
On the Kite the situation was being ‘workshopped’. This is the means by which people who don’t know anything get together to pool their ignorance. (LH)
'I was just hoping that if I didn’t say anything you’d stop trying to explain things to me.' (LH)
A lot of things never entered Mrs Whitlow’s head. She’d decided a long time ago that the world was a lot nicer that way. (LC)
... the Patrician was against printing, because if people knew too much it would only bother them. (J)
Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish
and useless things like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sago-sago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movements of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It’s a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago. (H) 'Carrot, I think you’ve got something wrong with your head,’ said Angua.
'What?’ ‘I think you may have got it stuck up your bum.' (FC) His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few people. (Ma)
'Look,' said Magrat desperately, ‘why don’t I go by myself?’
‘‘Cos you ain’t experienced at fairy godmothering,’ said Granny Weatherwax. This was too much even for Magrat’s generous soul. ‘Well, nor are you,’ she said. ‘That’s true,’ Granny conceded. ‘But the point is…the point is…the point is we’ve not been experienced for a lot longer than you.' (WA) Colon didn’t reply. I wish Captain Vimes were here, he thought. He wouldn’t have known what to do either, but he’s got a much better vocabulary to be baffled in. (GG)
Then Mort said, ‘What do all those symbols mean?’
‘Sodomy non sapiens,’ said Albert under his breath. ‘What does that mean?’ ‘Means I’m buggered if I know.' (M) Albert grunted. ‘Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?’
Mort thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said eventually, ‘what?’ There was silence. Then Albert straightened up and said, ‘Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve ‘em right.' (M) 'Before I heard him talk, I was like everyone else. You know what I mean? I was confused and uncertain about all the little details of life. But now,’ he brightened up, ‘while I’m still confused and uncertain it’s on a much higher plane, d’you see, and at least I know I’m bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.’
Treacle nodded. ‘I hadn’t looked at it like that,’ he said, ‘but you’re absolutely right. He’s really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance. There’s so much about the universe we don’t know’. They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were ignorant of only ordinary things. (ER) 'They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.' (ER)
'I don't think humans want to know things that disturb them.' (Wings)
People don’t live on the Disc any more than, in less hand-crafted parts of the multiverse, they live on balls. Oh, planets may be the place where their body eats its tea, but they live elsewhere, in worlds of their own which orbit very handily around the centre of their heads. (LC)
The landlord of the Fiddler’s Riddle considered himself to be a man of the world, and this was right, because he was too stupid to be really cruel, and too lazy to be really mean and although his body had been around quite a lot his mind had never gone further than the inside of his own head. (ER)
'Algebra?’ said Madam Frout, perforce staring at her own bosom, which no one else had ever done. ‘But that’s far too difficult for seven-year-olds!’
‘Yes, but I didn’t tell them that and so far they haven’t found out,’ said Susan. (TOT) Like most people –most people, at any rate, below the age of sixty or so – Verence hadn’t exercised his mind much about what happened to you when you died. Like most people since the dawn of time, he assumed it all somehow worked out all right in the end.
And like most people since the dawn of time, he was now dead. (WS) What does "surrender" mean?' said Dorcas, desperately.
'We don't know the meaning of surrender,' said Grimma. 'Well, I don't,' said Dorcas. (Dig) ... it used to be so simple, once upon a time.
Because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientist panned through it like a prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreason, the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of superstition. Occasionally he would straighten up and say things like ‘Hurrah, I’ve discovered Boyle’s Third Law.’ And everyone knew where they stood. But the trouble was that ignorance became more interesting, especially big fascinating ignorance about huge and important things like matter and creation, and people stopped patiently building their little houses of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started getting interested in the chaos itself – partly because it was a lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it made really good patterns that you could put on a t-shirt. (WA) |
Author
The world has lost Sir Terry, and it's so much the poorer for that. Vale Sir Terry. Categories
All
Archives
March 2023
|