Be one of the crowd? It went against everything a wizard stood for, and a wizard would not stand for anything if he could sit down for it, but even sitting down, you had to stand out.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of individuality and standing out rather than conforming to the crowd.
Terry Pratchett's quote highlights the conflict between conformity and individuality, particularly in the context of being a wizard, a symbol of uniqueness and power. It suggests that true strength lies in being oneself and not merely blending in with others, advocating for the idea that one should embrace their distinctiveness even in a world that often encourages conformity.
In practice
Use this quote during a motivational speech about the importance of embracing one's uniqueness.
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.
Could I get mansions covering ten thousand miles, I'd house all the poor scholars and make them beam with smiles
When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.*
How can you respect the world when you see it's being run by a bunch of kids turned old?
The law of God cannot be fulfilled by external obedience.
Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilization were to be based on the gruesome glory of war.
Man is able to decide for or against reason, he is able to create beyond reason or to destroy below reason
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