Ah," said Mr Pin. "Right. I remember. You are concerned citizens." He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where 'traditional values' meant 'hang someone'.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the concept of 'traditional values' and how it can be misused by those claiming to uphold them.
In this quote, Terry Pratchett highlights the hypocrisy often found in discussions about 'traditional values' by illustrating how those who claim to champion these values may actually advocate for harmful actions, such as punishment without due process. It serves as a cautionary reflection on how language can be weaponized and how societal norms can be twisted to justify extreme measures.
In practice
In a discussion on ethical leadership, this quote can illuminate the dangers of misinterpreting traditional values.
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
I think there are ways in which we censor ourselves; that's the most dangerous kind of censorship - that's how hegemony works.
Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.
We turn, three men bound by love, by history, by circumstance, and most certainly by the awful grace of God, and together walk a narrow lane where headstones press close all around, reminding me gently of Warren Redstone’s parting wisdom, which I understand now. The dead are never far from us. They’re in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final puff of air.
The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them.
Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.
Life is not at all what you might think it to be_x000D_ _x000D_ A simple tale where each thing has its history_x000D_ _x000D_ It's much more than its scuffle and anything goes_x000D_ _x000D_ Both evil and good, subject to the same laws.
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