Quotes About Discovery

WHERE'S MY COW? ARE YOU MY COW? 

I read anything that's going to be interesting. But you don't know what it is until you've read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there'll be the making of a novel.

I did start out in witchcraft to get boys, to tell you the truth.' 'Think I don't know that?' 'What did you start out to get, Esme?' Granny stopped, and looked up at the frosty sky and then down at the ground. 'Dunno,' she said at last.'Even, I suppose.

Who'd want a pony when you could have the whole universe? It was far more interesting and you didn't have to muck it out once a week.

Ye know full well that the meaning of life is to find your gift. To find your gift is happiness. Never tae find it is misery.

Then the Dean repeated the mantra that has had such a marked effect on the progress of knowledge throughout the ages. "Why don't we just mix up absolutely everything and see what happens?" he said. And Ridcully responded with the traditional response. "It's got to be worth a try," he said.

Ye ken, we've been robbin' and running aroound on all kinds o' worlds for a lang time, and I'll tell ye this: The universe is a lot more comp-li-cated than it looks from the ooutside.

Funny, reely, he said. You spend your whole life goin' to school and learnin' stuff, and they never tell you about stuff like the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs and all these Old Masters running around the inside of the Earth. Why do we have to learn boring stuff when there's all this brilliant stuff we could be learnin', that's what I want to know.

The universe was bad enough without people poking it.

the Ankh-Morpork Trespassers' Society was originally the Explorers' Society until Lord Vetinari forcibly insisted that most of the places 'discovered' by the society's members already had people in them, who were already trying to sell snakes to the newcomers.

I certainly don't sit down and plan a book out before I write it. There's a phrase I use called The Valley Full of Clouds. Writing a novel is as if you are going off on a journey across a valley. The valley is full of mist, but you can see the top of a tree here and the top of another tree over there. And with any luck you can see the other side of the valley. But you cannot see down into the mist. Nevertheless, you head for the first tree.

Well, the traveling teachers do come through every few months, said the Baron. Yes, sir, I know, sir, and they're useless, sir. They teach facts, not understanding. It's like teaching people about forests by showing them a saw. I want a proper school, sir, to teach reading and writing, and most of all thinking, sir, so people can find what they're good at, because someone doing what they really like is always an asset to any country, and too often people never find out until it's too late.

Science is not interested in what stands to reason.

Everything is magic when you don't know what it is. Your sliding rule is a magic wand to most people.

It was a large room, heavily outfitted with the usual badly ventilated furnaces, rows of bubbling crucibles, and one stuffed alligator. Things floated in jars. The air smelled of a limited life expectancy.

First you get the test, and then afterwards you spend years findin' out how you passed it.

What is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Dragons?

Humans are always slightly lost. It's a basic characteristic.

He calculated the number of bricks in the wall, first in twos and then in tens and finally in sixteens. The numbers formed up and marched past his brain in terrified obedience. Division and multiplication were discovered. Algebra was invented and provided an interesting diversion for a minute or two. And then he felt the fog of numbers drift away, and looked up and saw the sparkling, distant mountains of calculus.

We're living in science fiction, but we don't realize it.

And his head is on fire with new things[...]he called himself the little blue hermit, scuttling across the sand in search of a new shell, but now he looks at the sky and knows that no shell will ever be big enough, ever.

That was how it worked. No magic at all. But that time it had been magic. And it didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.

people went looking to find themselves and what they found was somebody else.

How many books are there? said Masklin. Hundreds! Thousands! Do you know what they're all about? Gurder looked at him blankly. Do you know what you're saying? he said. No. But I want to find out. They're about everything! You'd never believe it! They're full of words even I don't understand! Can you find a book which tells you how to understand words you don't understand? said Masklin. Gurder hesitated. It's an intriguing thought, he said.