Ninety percent of most magic consists of knowing one extra fact.

—Terry Pratchett

understanding knowledge magic

About Terry Pratchett

Portrait of Terry Pratchett

Sir Terence David John Pratchett (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English author, humorist, and satirist, best known for the Discworld series of 41 comic fantasy novels published between 1983 and 2015, and for the apocalyptic comedy novel Good Omens (1990), which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman.

More quotations from Terry Pratchett

Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.

—Terry Pratchett

wisdom perception distance

Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.

—Terry Pratchett

history people evil good flawed

A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.

—Terry Pratchett

snoring marriage disagreement

It's a popular fact that 90 percent of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong.… It is used. One of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary, to turn the unusual into the usual. Otherwise, human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing a stupid grin, saying, "Wow," a lot. Part of the brain exists to stop this from happening. It is very efficient, and can make people experience boredom in the middle of marvels.

—Terry Pratchett

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

—Terry Pratchett

thought thinking

More quotations tagged with “magic”

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.

—Emma Goldman

love power magic

Nature is a petrified magic city.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

—Arthur C. Clarke

technology magic

And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.

magic lightning breathing

Someone once said that love is the closest thing to magic that this world has, but magic enchants, deceives and casts a spell.

—Donna Lynn Hope

History

9 Jan 2016 Added