'Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it’s all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place…' (SG)
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It takes forty men with their feet on the ground to keep one man with his head in the air. (SG)
The people who really run organisations are usually found several levels down, where it’s still possible to get things done. (SG)
Victor had never worked for anything in his life. In his experience, jobs were things that happened to other people. (MP)
There were some things on which even they were united. No more policy statements, no more consultative documents, no more morale-boosting messages to all staff. This was Hell, but you had to draw the line somewhere. (E)
'But you don’t have to go! I need you!’
‘You’ve got advisers,’ said Teppic mildly. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she snapped. ‘Anyway, there’s only Koomi, and he’s no good.’ ‘You’re lucky. I had Dios, and he was good. Koomi will be much better, you can learn a lot by not listening to what he has to say. You can go a long way with incompetent advisers.' (P) Besides, there was something disquieting about young Trymon. He didn’t smoke, only drank boiled water, and Galder had a nasty suspicion that he was clever. He didn’t smile often enough, and he liked figures and the sort of organisation charts that show lots of squares with arrows pointing to other squares. In short, he was the sort of man who could use the word ‘personnel’ and mean it. (LF)
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)
Evil Lords were generally brighter than heroes. You needed some functioning brain cells to do the payroll even for half
a dozen henchmen. (LH) '... the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you’re good at that, I’ll grant
you. But the trouble is that it’s the only thing you’re good at. One day it’s the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it’s everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was over-thrown no-one’s been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It’s part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world.' (GG) At Unseen University you had budgets, and if you didn’t use up everything you’d been given you wouldn’t get as much next time. If this meant you roasted all summer in order to be moderately warm during the winter, then that was a small price to pay for proper fiscal procedures. (TG)
'We are supposed to develop questioning minds, you know,’ someone muttered.
‘Yes, but not regarding university policy!’ said Ridcully. (DW) 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)
The wizards had spent a lot of time in an atmosphere where a cutting remark did more damage than a magic sword and, for sheer malign pleasure, a well structured memo could do more real damage than a fireball every time. (LC)
... the great, open ingenious purpose of UU was to be the weight on the arm of magic, causing it to swing with grave majesty like a pendulum rather than spin with deadly purpose like a morningstar. Instead of hurling fireballs at one
another from fortified towers the wizards learned to snipe at their colleagues over the interpretation of Faculty Council minutes, and long ago were amazed to find that they got just as much vicious fun out of it. They consumed big dinners, and after a really good meal and a fine cigar even the most rabid Dark Lord is inclined to put his feet up and feel amicable towards the world, especially if it offered him another brandy. (LC) And then suddenly someone somewhere wanted a thousand elephants, and the lad had raised his head and a gleam had come into his eye and you could see that under that grin was a skilled kilopachydermatolist ready to answer the call. Funny. You could know someone for their whole life and not realize that the gods had put them in this world to move a thousand elephants around the place. (MP)
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The world has lost Sir Terry, and it's so much the poorer for that. Vale Sir Terry. Categories
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