Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races... very handy.
Interpretation
The quote humorously highlights the tortoise's wisdom in navigating life at its own pace, suggesting that steady and thoughtful actions can lead to success.
In this quote, Terry Pratchett uses the tortoise as a metaphor for wisdom and perseverance, illustrating the idea that slow and steady progress can often triumph over haste and recklessness. By referencing the classic race between the tortoise and the hare, Pratchett underscores the importance of consistency and careful decision-making in life's challenges, suggesting that being philosophical and taking oneβs time can be incredibly beneficial.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech to encourage students to pursue their studies with patience.
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.
Complete adaptation to environment means death. The essential point in all response is the desire to control environment.
All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.
He who dictates and formulates the words and phrases we use, he who is master of the press and radio, is master of the mind. Repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity for communicating dissent and opposition. This is the formula for political conditioning of the masses.
In Kabul, hot running water had been like fathers, a rare commodity.
There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.
Anti-black racism operates at a society-wide level and colludes in a seamless web of policies, practices, and beliefs to oppress and disempower black communities.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.