People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.
Interpretation
History is largely unchangeable, and individuals only leave temporary marks on it.
In this quote, Terry Pratchett reflects on the nature of history and our role within it. He suggests that, like birds flying across the sky, individuals may create fleeting and temporary impacts on the vast tapestry of history, but ultimately, the course of history remains unchanged, implying a sense of humility in our actions and the recognition that we are part of a much larger narrative that persists beyond our individual contributions.
In practice
A speaker at a history conference discussing the importance of understanding our impact on historical narratives.
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.
I never make a distinction between private life and politics - that's a petit bourgeois thing. How can you make a stand against Nazi Germany, or in Rwanda, when you live life by making that distinction?
Is not anyone with any degree of mental honesty conscious of telling lies all day long, both in talking and writing, simply because lies will fall into artistic shape when truth will not?
In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.
Give obedience where 'tis truly owed.
Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.
I have everything, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing, still of nothing am I in want.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.