... she believed in encouraging logical thought and a healthy enquiring mind among the nascent young women in her care, a course of action which is, as far as wisdom is concerned, on a par with going alligator-hunting in a cardboard boat during the sinking season. (SM)
0 Comments
It wasn’t that Ridcully was stupid. Truly stupid wizards have the life expectancy of a glass hammer. He had quite a powerful intellect, but it was powerful like a locomotive, and ran on rails and was therefore almost impossible to steer. (LL)
In the dim light she could see Granny’s face which seemed to be suggesting that if Magrat was at her wits’ end, it was a short stroll. (WA)
Death sat on a mountaintop. It wasn’t particularly high, or bare, or sinister. No witches held naked sabbats on it; Discworld witches, on the whole, didn’t hold with taking off any more clothes than was absolutely necessary for the business in hand. No spectres haunted it. No naked little men sat on the summit dispensing wisdom, because the first thing the truly wise man works out is that sitting around on mountaintops gives you not only haemorrhoids but frostbitten haemorrhoids.
Occasionally people would climb the mountain and add a stone or two to the cairn at the top, if only to prove that there is nothing really damn stupid that humans won’t do. (RM) It was widely believed that, if Detritus could be taught to read and write sufficiently to sit down and do an intelligence test, he’d prove to be slightly less intelligent than the chair. (MP)
... he talked about history and destiny and all the other words that always got trotted out to put a gloss on slaughter. It was heady stuff, except that brains weren’t involved. (Th)
Didn't they do something like this up in Nothingfjord? He’d heard stories. They had hot steamy baths and then ran around in the snow hitting one another with birch logs, didn’t they? Or something. There was nothing really daft that some foreigner wouldn’t do somewhere. (FE)
Picturesque meant – he decided after careful observation of the scenery that inspired Twoflower to use the word – that the landscape was horribly precipitous. Quaint, when used to describe the occasional village through which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown.
Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, meant ‘idiot’. (COM) 'Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.' (H)
... some girl who can’t tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either be as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family. (WFM)
Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was. Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid. (MA)
Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time. (SG)
People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn’t true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people. (FC)
Detritus, despite a room-temperature IQ, made a good copper and a damn good sergeant. He had that special type of stupidity that was hard to fool. (FC)
'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)
'I used to think that I was stupid, and then I met philosophers.' (SG)
'Some people just become stupid with more authority.' (TOT)
Mort was already aware that love made you feel hot and cold and cruel and weak, but he hadn’t realised that it could make you stupid. (M)
'There are, some like to suggest, an infinite number of universes in order to allow everything that may happen a place to
happen in. This is of course nonsense, which we entertain only because we believe words are the same as reality. Now, however, I can prove my point, since in such an infinity of worlds there would have to be one where I would applaud your recent action and, let me assure you, sir, infinity is not that big!' (MM) He knew that the way to make people do what you wanted was to make them think it was their idea. If there was one thing that got right up a nome's nose, it was someone saying, 'Here is a really sensible idea. Why are you too stupid to understand?'
It wasn't that people were stupid. It was just that people were people. (Dig) 'No one would be that stu-’
Susan stopped. Of course someone would be that stupid. Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End-of-the-World-Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry. (TOT) We’re really good at it, Teppic thought. Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human to be really stupid. (P)
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)
A man who rushes into a burning building to rescue a stupid cat and comes out carrying the cat is seen as a hero, even if he is a rather dumb one. If he comes out sans cat he’s a twit. (GP)
'... a lot of diplomacy lies in appearing to be a lot more stupid than you are.' (FE)
|
Author
The world has lost Sir Terry, and it's so much the poorer for that. Vale Sir Terry. Categories
All
Archives
March 2023
|