Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

This quip riffs on the proverb “It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness,” replacing the modest candle with a wildly excessive “flamethrower.” The humor comes from the disproportionate response: instead of quiet, incremental improvement, it imagines decisive, even destructive action. Read charitably, it celebrates agency—doing something tangible rather than complaining—while also satirizing the human tendency to overcorrect or to mistake force for effectiveness. In a Pratchettian spirit, it can be taken as a joke about righteous indignation: when faced with darkness (ignorance, injustice, obstacles), some people don’t just illuminate it; they try to obliterate it.