Terry Pratchett’s line turns a familiar virtue into a cautionary joke: being open-minded is good, but it can also make you a target. The humor hinges on the physical metaphor—an “open” mind as an unguarded container—suggesting that some people don’t want to exchange ideas so much as deposit their own.
From the start, Pratchett frames openness not as passive acceptance but as a condition that requires active boundaries. In other words, curiosity is admirable, yet it can be exploited by anyone eager to fill empty space with certainty. [...]
