Knowing things is magical, if other people don't know them.
Interpretation
Knowledge can feel extraordinary when it is exclusive to a few.
This quote by Terry Pratchett highlights the sense of wonder that comes from possessing knowledge that others lack. It suggests that the realization of one's understanding can create a feeling of magic, emphasizing the subjective nature of knowledge and its impact on perception.
In practice
In a lecture about the importance of acquiring knowledge, this quote can illustrate how unique insights create value.
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.
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
All men's gains are the fruit of venturing.
The evangelical Christian faith I'd grown up with sustained me. It demanded that I refuse the drugs and alcohol on offer in our southwestern Ohio town, that I treat my friends and family kindly, and that I work hard in school. Most of all, when times were toughest, it gave me reason to hope.
You alone are the judge of your worth and your goal is to discover infinite worth in yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks.
The essence of independence is to be able to do something for oneβs self.
People will never know how hard it is to get information, especially if it's locked up behind official doors where, if politicians had their way, they'd stamp 'top secret' on the color of the walls.
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