Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself. The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.
Interpretation
Treat others as you would want to be treated, promoting kindness and empathy.
This quote emphasizes the importance of treating others with the same care and consideration you would want for yourself. It suggests that our actions and decisions should reflect empathy and understanding, and if more people adopted this mindset, the world would be a more compassionate place.
In practice
In a team meeting, I quoted Terry Pratchett to remind my colleagues to be considerate in their feedback.
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.
This wealth of experiences, personal and professional, have helped me appreciate the variety of perspectives that present themselves in every case that I hear.
He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.
You never find yourself until you face the truth.
I see a wonderful future in a very uncertain world. If we will cling to our values, if we will build on our inheritance, if we will walk in obedience before the Lord, if we will simply live the gospel we will be blessed in a magnificent and wonderful way. We will be looked upon as a peculiar people who have found the key to a peculiar happiness.
Organize, agitate, educate, must be our war cry.
Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.