Most horses don't walk backwards voluntarily, because what they can't see doesn't exist.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that many beings, like horses, prefer moving forward and often disregard the past or the unknown.
Terry Pratchett's quote illustrates the tendency of both animals and humans to focus on the present and future rather than on what's behind them. It reflects a philosophical outlook on perception and existence, emphasizing that our understanding of reality is often limited to what we can see and understand. Much like horses that instinctively avoid walking backward, individuals may choose to ignore past experiences or uncertain aspects of life, suggesting that the unseen or unknown holds little power over our current actions.
In practice
In a motivational speech about moving forward in life, one might say, 'As Terry Pratchett noted, most horses don't walk backwards voluntarily, reminding us to focus on our future.'
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.
Self-definition and self-determination is about the many varied decisions that we make to compose and journey toward ourselves, about the audacity and strength to proclaim, create, and evolve into who we know ourselves to be. Itβs okay if your personal definition is in a constant state of flux as you navigate the world.
If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.
So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
One must not judge everyone in the world by his qualities as a soldier: otherwise we should have no civilization.
Many introverts feel there's something wrong with them, and try to pass as extroverts. But whenever you try to pass as something you're not, you lose a part of yourself along the way. You especially lose a sense of how to spend your time.
If you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully -- as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your ancestors.
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