Rhapsodies

Thought I’d try something new. I like to collect quotes and every time I stumble over one I like I put it in a data base I maintain for such a purpose. For the most part they’re all over the place from Shakespeare to bathroom graffiti the only constant being my thinking they appeal to my sense of humor, contrariness or my efforts to find items to back up a personal philosophy which I admit is still a work in progress.

Anyway I decided to start sharing them.

Today’s quote will be from the great Havelock Vetenari as channeled by the even greater Terry Pratchett (I’ll warn you in advance… I’m going to have a lot of material from Mr. Pratchett) As he speaks on evil, ethics, morality  and theology.

“I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”

Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals, 2009