Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.
Interpretation
The quote humorously suggests that certainty and preparedness can lead to unexpected disasters, indicating the need for caution.
Terry Pratchett humorously implies that when one is overly confident that everything is under control—especially in a field as precarious as the nuclear industry—it's wise to prepare for potential chaos that may arise. The exaggeration of buying a house on another continent suggests that one should always be ready for the unexpected, even when things appear secure.
In practice
During a speech on risk management, this quote illustrates how overconfidence can lead to unexpected outcomes.
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.
Every correct answer is necessarily a secret: something important and unknown, something hard to do but doable.
When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, and dignified as a king. Immersed in wonder, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready.
No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.
Let us never yield to pessimism, to that bitterness that the devil offers us every day.
Be led by your talent, not by your self-loathing; those other things you just have to manage.
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
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