Granny was an old-fashioned witch. She didn’t do good for people, she did right by them.
Interpretation
Doing what is right may not always align with conventional notions of goodness.
In this quote, Terry Pratchett highlights that true morality often transcends conventional definitions of good and bad. Granny, as an old-fashioned witch, embodies the idea that rightness involves a deeper understanding of justice and integrity, focusing on what is morally correct rather than simply what is socially acceptable or kind.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about ethics in leadership.
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.
Someone who is elated with wine speaks the truth on all subjects, even without meaning to. In the same way, anyone who is inebriated with the spirit of penitence will never be able to tell lies.
If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.
Hope, even more than necessity, is the mother of invention.
The boy didn't know what a Personal Legend was. 'It's what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.
There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.
It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous.
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