'Sometimes what is legal isn't what is right, and sometimes it needs a witch to tell the difference. And sometimes a copper too, if you have the right kind of copper. Clever people know this. Stupid people don't. And the trouble is, stupid people can be oh so clever.' (ISWM)
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'And though nobody's saying it, we're locked in here for our protection. You see, everyone else is locked out, and although they sometimes act dumb, policemen can't help being clever. They know that people need witches, they need the unofficial people who understand the difference between right and wrong, and when right is wrong and when wrong is right.' (ISWM)
People often didn't stop to think. They thought as they went along. Sometimes it was a good idea. Just to stop moving, in case you moved the wrong way. (ISWM)
There things that were important and things that weren't, and times when you knew the difference. (UA)
'…what the wise man cannot change he must channel.' (UA)
... the perfect world is a journey, not a place. (N)
Wizards were rumored to be wise - in fact, that’s where the word came from.*
*From the Old wys-ars, lit.: one who, at bottom, is very smart. (SM) Once you know things, you’re a different person. You can’t help it. (Wings)
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. (Dig)
'We live and learn. I always thought that was the best time,’ said Brocando. (CP)
'Look, just because a woman’s got no teeth doesn’t mean she’s wise. It might just mean she’s been stupid for a very long time.' (W)
'Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them. Harder, maybe. There’d be a sight more frogs in this world if I didn’t know how not to turn people into them.' (HFS)
Bits of Miss Tick’s teachings floated through her head: Always face what you fear. Have enough money, never too much, and some string. Even if it’s not your fault it’s your responsibility. Witches deal with things. Never stand between two mirrors. Never cackle. Do what you must do. Never lie, but you don’t always have to be honest. Never wish. Especially don’t wish upon a star, which is astronomically stupid. Open you eyes, and then open your eyes again. (HFS)
'You know the secret wisdoms that everyone seeks, monk.’ The bottle-washer paused. ‘No, I even suspect that you know the explicit wisdoms, the ones hidden in plain view, which practically no one looks for.' (TOT)
'The wise man does not seek enlightenment, he waits for it. So while I was waiting it occurred to me that seeking perplexity might be more fun,’ said Lu-Tze. (TOT)
'Ah,’ said Clodpool, with an expression that he thought made hime look wise, although in reality it made him look like someone remembering a painful bowel movement. (TOT)
'I have heard the heartbeat of the universe. I know the answers to many questions. Ask me.’
The apprentice gave him a bleary look. It was too early in the morning for it to be early in the morning. That was the only thing he currently knew for sure. ‘Er…what does master want for breakfast?’ he said. Wen looked down on their camp and across the snowfields and purple mountains to the golden daylight creating the world, and mused upon certain aspects of humanity. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘One of the difficult ones.' (TOT) 'And are you omnipotent?’
‘Aye, lass, but there’s pills I’m takin’ f’r it!' (LH) The path to wisdom does, in fact, begin with a single step.
Where people go wrong is in ignoring all the thousands of other steps that come after it. They make the single step of deciding to become one with the universe, and for some reason forget to take the logical next step of living for seventy years on a mountain and a daily bowl of rice and yak-butter tea that would give it any kind of meaning. While evidence says that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they’re probably all on first steps. (H) Senior wizards of Unseen University are masters of dynamic inactivity. But when danger threatens they can be relied upon to pull together, although not necessarily, it must be said, in the same direction.
It has been pointed out that while they have understood that the first step on the path to wisdom is to become as a small child, they haven’t grasped that there is a second step. (PP) There was no point freezing your nadgers off on top of some mountain while communing with the Infinite unless you could rely on a lot of impressionable young women to come along occasionally and say ‘Gosh’. (Ma)
Also, there’s a certain glint in her eye generally possessed by those people who have found that they are more intelligent than most people around them but who haven’t yet learned that one of the most intelligent things they can do is prevent said people ever finding this out. (LL)
Simony snorted. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘we live and learn, just like you said.’
‘Some of us even do it the other way around,’ said Didactylos. (SG) It's a strange thing about determined seekers-after-wisdom that, no matter where they happen to be, they’ll always seek that wisdom which is a long way off. Wisdom is one of the few things that look bigger the further away it is. (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) |
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