'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)
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'I used to think that I was stupid, and then I met philosophers.' (SG)
'Are you a philosopher? Where’s your sponge?' (SG)
'Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.' (SG)
His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools - the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans - and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, ‘You can’t trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s have a drink.' (SG)
'That’s why it’s always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it’s all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does A Falling Tree in the Forest Make A Sound if There’s No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they’re going to start dribbling one of ‘em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy’s ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles…' (SG)
'What’s a philosopher?’ said Brutha.
‘Someone who’s bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,’ said a voice in his head. (SG) One of the recurring philosophical questions is:
‘Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?’ Which says something about the nature of philosophers, because there is always someone in the forest. It may only be a badger, wondering what that cracking noise was, or a squirrel a bit puzzled by all the scenery going upwards, but someone. (SG) These men are philosophers, he thought. They had told him so. So their brains must be so big that they have room for ideas that no-one else would consider for five seconds. (P)
The astro-philosophers of Krull once succeeded in proving conclusively that all places are one place and that the distance between them is an illusion, and this news was an embarrassment to all thinking philosophers because it did
not explain, among other things, signposts. After years of wrangling the whole thing was then turned over to Lyn Tin Wheedle, arguably the Disc’s greatest philosopher*, who after some thought proclaimed that although it was indeed true that all places were one place, that place was very large. *He always argued that he was. (S) Wizards don’t like philosophy very much. As far as they are concerned, one hand clapping makes a noise like ‘cl’. (S)
'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)
A magical accident in the Library, which as has already been indicated is not a place for your average rubber-stamp-and-Dewey-decimal employment, had some time ago turned the Librarian into an orang-utan. He had since resisted all efforts to turn him back. He liked the handy long arms, the prehensile toes and the right to scratch himself in public, but most of all he liked the way all the big questions of existence had suddenly resolved themselves into a vague interest in where his next banana was coming from. It wasn’t that he was unaware of the despair and nobility of the human condition. It was just that as far as he was concerned you could stuff it. (S)
According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organised. (IT)
The post of Senior Wrangler was an unusual one, as was the name itself. In some centres of learning, the Senior Wrangler is a leading philosopher; in others, he’s merely someone who looks after horses. The Senior Wrangler at UnseenUniversity was a philosopher who looked like a horse, thus neatly encapsulating all definitions. (RM)
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