... maybe the rules were there to make you think before you broke them. (TOT)
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Everyone has an unconditional clause in their life, some little unspoken addition to the rules like 'except when I really need to' or 'unless no one is looking' or, indeed, 'unless the first on was nougat.' (TOT)
... perhaps everyone need a tiny part of themselves that can, metaphorically, be allowed to run naked in the rain*, to think the unthinkable thoughts, to hide in corners and spy on the world, to do the forbidden but enjoyable deeds.
* Quite an overrated activity. (TOT) ... she was a witch and a teacher and that's a terrible combination. They want things to be right. They like things to be correct. (HFS)
'Don't do anything I wouldn't do, if you ever find anything I wouldn't do.' (CJ)
... he does the best he can in an imperfect world and calls it the law. (PP)
That was their law. The strongest man led. That made sense. At least, it made sense to strong men. (N)
'That's illegal,' said Sergeant Bunyan sternly. 'In other words, don't let me catch you doing it.' (WVC)
... history was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started to follow bad orders. (J)
It is a strange but reliable fact that whenever men throw off the yoke of tyrants and set out to rule themselves there emerges, like mushrooms after rain, Mr Clete.
Hat. Hat. Hat. Mr Clete laughed at things in inverse proportion to the actual humour of the situation. (SM) Vorbis liked to see properly guilty consciences. That was what consciences were for. Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned. (SG)
‘The man was mad!’
‘He had a very tidy mind,’ said the Bursar. ‘Same thing.’ (MP) 'Do you think picking someone up by their ankles and bouncing their head on the floor comes under the heading of Striking a Superior Officer?' (GG)
... laws governing the animal kingdom did not apply to the Librarian. On the other hand, the Librarian himself was never very interested in obeying the laws governing the human kingdom, either. He was one of those little anomalies you have to build around. (GG)
… there is no point in being the official bad person if you play by the rules. (BOS)
There ought to be signs, and if there was a sign there should be a sign on it to show that it was a sign so that you definitely knew it was a sign. (Do)
'We are going to stick to the rules. And the thing about sticking to the rules is that it's sometimes better than cheating.' (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)
... you only thought the world would be better if it was run by women if you didn’t actually know many women. Or old women, at least. Take the whole thing about the dimity scarves. Women had to cover their hair on Fridays, but there was nothing about this in the Book, which was pretty dar-pretty damn rigorous about most things. It was just a custom. It was done because it was always done. And if you forgot, or didn’t want to, the old women got you. They had eyes like hawks. They could practically see through walls. And the men took notice, because no man wanted to cross the crones in case they started watching him, so half-hearted punishment would be dealt out. Whenever there was an execution, and especially when there was a whipping, you always found the grannies in the front row, sucking peppermints. (MR)
One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual. (J)
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) Many people are aware of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles. The Weak One says, basically, that it was jolly amazing of the universe to be constructed in such a way that humans could evolve to a point where they make a living in, for example, universities, while the Strong One says that, on the contrary, the whole point of the universe was that humans should not only work in universities but also write for huge sums books with words like“Cosmic” and “Chaos” in the titles.
The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics. (H) He explained – although ‘explained’ is probably too positive a word, and in this case really means failed to explain but at some length – that it was perfectly possible to travel across the world in a small lamp being carried by one of the party, the lamp itself moving because it was being carried by one of the people inside it, because of a) the fractal nature of reality, which meant that everything could be thought of as being inside everything else and b) creative public relations.
The trick relied on the laws of physics failing to spot the flaw until the journey was complete. (S) 'There have to be rules, Mistress Weatherwax.’
‘And what’s the first one that your Om requires, then?’ ‘That believers should worship no other god but Om,’ said Oats promptly. ‘Oh yes? That’s gods for you. Very self-centred, as a rule.' (CJ) It was the ritual that was important, not the gods. The gods were there to do the duties of a megaphone, because who else would people listen to. (P)
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