If you were going to be successful in the world of crime, you needed a reputation for honesty.
Interpretation
A reputation for honesty is essential, even in dishonest fields.
This quote by Terry Pratchett highlights the paradox that even in the world of crime, where wrongdoing is the norm, a personβs reputation for honesty can be a critical asset. It suggests that trustworthiness can be a strategic advantage, implying that integrity holds value even in places where it is least expected.
In practice
In a discussion about ethics in business.
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.
In each moment the fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils. And carry you a thousand steps toward your goal.
You must not talk about 'ain't and can't' when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean.
God does not comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters.
Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise.
What difference would a clear vision of my principles, values, and ultimate objectives make in the way I spend my time?
Do a few things at mastery versus many things at mediocrity.
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