And that's what I don't like about magic, Captain. 'cos it's *magic*. You can't ask questions, it's magic. It doesn't explain anything, it's magic. You don't know where it comes from, it's magic! That's what I don't like about magic, it does everything by magic!
Interpretation
The quote expresses a skepticism towards magic as something that lacks explanation and understanding.
In this quote, Terry Pratchett articulates a disdain for the concept of magic because it operates beyond the realm of reason and inquiry. The speaker feels frustrated by the mysteriousness of magic, emphasizing that it offers no answers or insights into how things work, thereby presenting a barrier to comprehension and rational thought.
In practice
During a discussion on the nature of reality, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of inquiry.
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.
We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.
One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.
Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.
Attack those concepts such as 'third world.' Think about it. If we look at it in terms of numbers, then people of color are the majority in this world. We should be the 'first world.'
Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively are less free.
Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
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