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.
In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.
The Great Seal was an early proclamation of 'humanitarian intervention,' to use the currently fashionable phrase.
My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!
As patience leads to peace, and study to science, so are humiliations the path that leads to humility.
Commemoration of John Donne, Priest, Poet, 1631 He was the Word that spake it; He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it I do believe, and take it.
My voice is born repeatedly in the fields of uncertainty.
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