The Science of Discworld: The Globe by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen
A wizard may be safely defined as a large ego which comes to a point at the top. That is why wizards do not blend well. That would mean looking like other people, and wizards do not wish to look like other people. Wizards aren’t other people. (TG)
Rincewind was the least senior member of the faculty. Indeed, the Archchancellor had made it clear that in seniority terms he ranked somewhat lower than the things that went ‘click’ in the woodwork. He got no salary and had complete insecurity of tenure. On the other hand, he got his laundry done free, a place at mealtimes and a bucket of coal a day. He also had his own office, no one ever visited him and he was strictly forbidden from attempting to teach anything to anyone. In academic terms, therefore, he considered himself pretty lucky. (TG)
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)
‘…I’ve run into elves.’
‘And?’
‘And then I’ve run away from them.’ (TG)
‘He says that if the faculty get to know one another better, they’ll be a happier, more efficient team.’
‘But they do know one another. They’ve known one another for ages! That’s why they don’t like one another very much.’ (TG)
…no one wakes up a 300lb orangutan (twice at least)… (TG)
Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass, and on that simple equation rests the whole of L-space. It is via L-space that all books are connected (quoting the ones before them, and influencing the ones that come after). But there is no time in L-space. Nor is there, strictly speaking, any space. Nevertheless, L-space is infinitely large and connects all libraries, everywhere and everywhen. It’s never further than the other side of the bookshelf, yet only the most senior and respected librarians know the way in. (TG)
There are some laws, though, that are coded into the very nature of the universe, and one is: There Is Never Enough Shelf Space. (TG)
…one book could be a library, if it was a book that made a big enough dimple in L-space. A book with a title like 100 Ways with Broccoli was unlikely to be one such, whereas The Relationship Between Capital and Labour might be, especially if it had an appendix on making explosives. (TG)
‘Lack of absence from this place will undoubtedly result in metal entering the body.’ (TG)
Most wizards would die rather than take exercise, and did, but Ridcully had the rude health of a bear and only marginally better interpersonal skills. Despite his quite considerable if erratic erudition, at heart he was a man who’d rather smack someone around the ear than develop a complicated argument. (TG)
... the presence of beer always greases the rungs of the evolutionary ladder ... (TG)
... the accepted wisdom on Discworld was that monkeys were the descendants of people who had given up trying. (TG)
'Can we just pretend for a moment, sir, that this is true?'
'For the sake of argument?'
'Well, for the sake of not having an argument, sir...' (TG)
Humanity was very creative, when it came to bring frightened. It was good (italics) at filling the future full of dread. (TG)
‘In an unknown situation always hope for savages. They tend to be quite polite and hospitable provided you don’t make any sudden moves or eat the wrong sort of animals.’ ‘What sort of animals?’ said Ridcully.
‘Taboo, sir. They tend to be related. Or something.’
‘That sounds rather…sophisticated,’ said Ponder suspiciously.
‘Savages often are,’ said Rincewind. ‘It’s the civilised people that give you trouble. They always want to drag you off somewhere and ask you unsophisticated questions.’ (TG)
‘Bein’ around for millions of years is not an achievement. Even lumps of stone can manage it.’ (TG)
Like many people, wizards often have secrets they don’t want themselves to know. (TG)
‘…nothing is certain, even if you know it is.’ (TG)
Misogynists to a man, the wizards were therefore always punctiliously polite to ladies. (TG)
Sean knew his witches. It was best to give in right at the start. (TG)
Witches took the view that they helped society in all kinds of ways which couldn't easily be explained but would become obvious if they stopped doing them, and that it was worth six pence and one half-penny not to find out what these were. (TG)
'Philosophers are always having ideas in the bath ...' (TG)
The wizards were entering the special fugue state known as the Hubbub, where no-one was going to be allowed to finish a sentence because someone else would drown them out. It was how the wizards decided things. (TG)
‘Art’s for slackers!’ (TG)
History gets named afterwards: The Age of Enlightenment, the Depression. Which is not to say that people sometimes aren’t depressed with all the enlightenment around them, or strangely elevated during otherwise grey times. Or periods are named after kings, as if the country was defined by whichever stony-faced cut-throat had schemed and knifed his way to the top, and as if people would say, ‘Hooray, the reign of the House of Chichester – a time of deep division along religious lines and continuing conflict with Belgium – is now at an end and we can look forward to the time of the House of Luton, a period of expansion and the growth of learning!’ (TG)
‘We say Seeing is Believing…and I thought about that, and it’s not really true. We don’t believe in chairs. Chairs are just things that exist.’
‘So?’ said Ridcully.
‘We don’t believe in things we can see. We believe in things that we can’t see.’ (TG)
He wanted, intensely, to believe in a world where logic worked. It was a matter of faith. (TG)
He envied those philosophers. They nodded to their gods and then by degrees, destroyed them. (TG)
He was not, as an actor and a writer, averse to alcohol bought by other people… (TG)
‘I read the Comedy of Errors last night,’ said the Dean. ‘And I could see the error right there. There wasn’t any comedy.’ (TG)
‘I don’t like it. It’s too quiet.’
‘No sir, no sir,’ said Rincewind. ‘That’s not the time not to like it. The time not to like it is when it’s suddenly as noisy as all hell, sir.’ (TG)
... while they had no great intelligence that had accumulated that mass of observations, experience, cynicism and memory that can pass for wisdom among people who don't know any better. (TG)
Rincewind was the least senior member of the faculty. Indeed, the Archchancellor had made it clear that in seniority terms he ranked somewhat lower than the things that went ‘click’ in the woodwork. He got no salary and had complete insecurity of tenure. On the other hand, he got his laundry done free, a place at mealtimes and a bucket of coal a day. He also had his own office, no one ever visited him and he was strictly forbidden from attempting to teach anything to anyone. In academic terms, therefore, he considered himself pretty lucky. (TG)
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)
‘…I’ve run into elves.’
‘And?’
‘And then I’ve run away from them.’ (TG)
‘He says that if the faculty get to know one another better, they’ll be a happier, more efficient team.’
‘But they do know one another. They’ve known one another for ages! That’s why they don’t like one another very much.’ (TG)
…no one wakes up a 300lb orangutan (twice at least)… (TG)
Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass, and on that simple equation rests the whole of L-space. It is via L-space that all books are connected (quoting the ones before them, and influencing the ones that come after). But there is no time in L-space. Nor is there, strictly speaking, any space. Nevertheless, L-space is infinitely large and connects all libraries, everywhere and everywhen. It’s never further than the other side of the bookshelf, yet only the most senior and respected librarians know the way in. (TG)
There are some laws, though, that are coded into the very nature of the universe, and one is: There Is Never Enough Shelf Space. (TG)
…one book could be a library, if it was a book that made a big enough dimple in L-space. A book with a title like 100 Ways with Broccoli was unlikely to be one such, whereas The Relationship Between Capital and Labour might be, especially if it had an appendix on making explosives. (TG)
‘Lack of absence from this place will undoubtedly result in metal entering the body.’ (TG)
Most wizards would die rather than take exercise, and did, but Ridcully had the rude health of a bear and only marginally better interpersonal skills. Despite his quite considerable if erratic erudition, at heart he was a man who’d rather smack someone around the ear than develop a complicated argument. (TG)
... the presence of beer always greases the rungs of the evolutionary ladder ... (TG)
... the accepted wisdom on Discworld was that monkeys were the descendants of people who had given up trying. (TG)
'Can we just pretend for a moment, sir, that this is true?'
'For the sake of argument?'
'Well, for the sake of not having an argument, sir...' (TG)
Humanity was very creative, when it came to bring frightened. It was good (italics) at filling the future full of dread. (TG)
‘In an unknown situation always hope for savages. They tend to be quite polite and hospitable provided you don’t make any sudden moves or eat the wrong sort of animals.’ ‘What sort of animals?’ said Ridcully.
‘Taboo, sir. They tend to be related. Or something.’
‘That sounds rather…sophisticated,’ said Ponder suspiciously.
‘Savages often are,’ said Rincewind. ‘It’s the civilised people that give you trouble. They always want to drag you off somewhere and ask you unsophisticated questions.’ (TG)
‘Bein’ around for millions of years is not an achievement. Even lumps of stone can manage it.’ (TG)
Like many people, wizards often have secrets they don’t want themselves to know. (TG)
‘…nothing is certain, even if you know it is.’ (TG)
Misogynists to a man, the wizards were therefore always punctiliously polite to ladies. (TG)
Sean knew his witches. It was best to give in right at the start. (TG)
Witches took the view that they helped society in all kinds of ways which couldn't easily be explained but would become obvious if they stopped doing them, and that it was worth six pence and one half-penny not to find out what these were. (TG)
'Philosophers are always having ideas in the bath ...' (TG)
The wizards were entering the special fugue state known as the Hubbub, where no-one was going to be allowed to finish a sentence because someone else would drown them out. It was how the wizards decided things. (TG)
‘Art’s for slackers!’ (TG)
History gets named afterwards: The Age of Enlightenment, the Depression. Which is not to say that people sometimes aren’t depressed with all the enlightenment around them, or strangely elevated during otherwise grey times. Or periods are named after kings, as if the country was defined by whichever stony-faced cut-throat had schemed and knifed his way to the top, and as if people would say, ‘Hooray, the reign of the House of Chichester – a time of deep division along religious lines and continuing conflict with Belgium – is now at an end and we can look forward to the time of the House of Luton, a period of expansion and the growth of learning!’ (TG)
‘We say Seeing is Believing…and I thought about that, and it’s not really true. We don’t believe in chairs. Chairs are just things that exist.’
‘So?’ said Ridcully.
‘We don’t believe in things we can see. We believe in things that we can’t see.’ (TG)
He wanted, intensely, to believe in a world where logic worked. It was a matter of faith. (TG)
He envied those philosophers. They nodded to their gods and then by degrees, destroyed them. (TG)
He was not, as an actor and a writer, averse to alcohol bought by other people… (TG)
‘I read the Comedy of Errors last night,’ said the Dean. ‘And I could see the error right there. There wasn’t any comedy.’ (TG)
‘I don’t like it. It’s too quiet.’
‘No sir, no sir,’ said Rincewind. ‘That’s not the time not to like it. The time not to like it is when it’s suddenly as noisy as all hell, sir.’ (TG)
... while they had no great intelligence that had accumulated that mass of observations, experience, cynicism and memory that can pass for wisdom among people who don't know any better. (TG)