Granny Weatherwax on Critical Thinking

With thanks to Chris Jones and Terry Pratchett. (And to Mel for sharing.)

Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/7738503@N05/493603497

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• ‘Foolish child. All you could tell was that he thought he was telling the truth.  The world isn’t always as people see it.’
• ‘They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.’
• ‘Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact,’ said Granny.
• ‘We’re bound to be truthful,’ she said.  ‘But there’s no call to be honest.’
• ‘Oh, obvious,’ said Granny.  ‘I’ll grant you it’s obvious.  Trouble is, just because things are obvious doesn’t mean they’re true.’
• It had taken many years under the tutelage of Granny Weatherwax for Magrat to learn that the common kitchen breadknife was better than the most ornate of magical knives. It could do all that the magical knife could do, plus you could also use it to cut bread.
• Granny Weatherwax did not believe in atmospheres.  She did not believe in psychic auras.  Being a witch, she’d always thought, depended more on what you didn’t believe.
• Nanny kicked her red boots together idly. ‘Well, I suppose there’s no place like home,’ she said. ‘No,’ said Granny Weatherwax, still looking thoughtful.  ‘No.  There’s a billion places like home.  But only one of ‘em’s where you live.’ ‘So, we’re going back?’ said Magrat. ‘Yes.’ But they went the long way, and saw the elephant.
• ‘I don’t hold with paddlin’ with the occult,” said Granny firmly.  ‘Once you start paddlin’ with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you’re believing in gods. And then you’re in trouble.’ ‘But all them things exist,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘That’s no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages ‘em.’
• ‘You can’t say “if this didn’t happen then that​ would have happened” because you don’t know​ everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible.’
• ‘Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.’
• ‘What don’t live can’t change. What don’t change can’t learn.’
• ‘I had to learn.  All my life.  The hard way.  And the hard way’s pretty hard, but not so hard as the easy way.’
• Granny Weatherwax was firmly against fiction.  Life was hard enough without lies floating around and changing the way people thought.
• ‘I thought you didn’t like books,’ said Agnes. ‘I don’t,’ said Granny, turning a page. ‘They can look you right in the face and still lie.’
• ‘Are you offering to teach me something?’ ‘Teach?  No,’ said Granny.  ‘Ain’t got the patience for teaching.  But I might let you learn.’
• ‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’ ‘No.  It ain’t.  When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they mean they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth.’
• ‘Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them.  Harder, maybe.  There’d be a sight more frogs in this world if I didn’t know how not to turn people into them.’
• ‘Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.’
• Granny was an old-fashioned witch.  She didn’t do good for people, she did right by them.  But Nanny knew that people don’t always appreciate right.
• Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew.  But Granny Weatherwax could listen in a cutting way.  She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it.