You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Interpretation
This quote humorously highlights the limitations one faces in a particular role or identity.
Terry Pratchett uses the metaphor of a tortoise to illustrate that some individuals or groups may not have the capacity to confront challenges or adversaries directly. Instead of aggression, they may resort to subtlety or nonverbal communication, emphasizing that one's nature can dictate the approach to conflict or tension in life.
In practice
In a discussion about the limits of personal abilities during a team meeting.
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.
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'm not cruel, sir, I won't shoot you in the guts, but I will make you realize how much you took your toes for granted.
The humor is that finally when you have the power to move the mountain, you are the person who placed it there-so there the mountain stays.
Those of you who are not aware of my brilliant career as a stand up comic, I'm not aware of it either so we might well wonder what we're doing here.
When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don't respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out.
Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business - which at least does us all some good.
When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.
It's hard to be humble, when you're as great as I am.
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