Terry Pratchett Quotes

“HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)”

Foreword to The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1998) by David Pringle, and The Definitive Illustrated Guide to Fantasy (2003) by David Pringle
General sources

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

“Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

Terry Pratchett Quotes about people

“There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.”

“Anyway, if you stop tellin' people it's all sorted out afer they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.”

“If you trust in yourself… and believe in your dreams… and follow your star… you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

Variant: If you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.
Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Variant: Now... if you trust in yourself... and believe in your dreams... and follow your star... you'll still get beaten by people who spenttime working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. Goodbye.
Source: The Wee Free Men

“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”

Terry Pratchett book I Shall Wear Midnight

Variant: And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things.
Source: I Shall Wear Midnight

“If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

“The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.”

Terry Pratchett book Jingo

Source: Jingo

Terry Pratchett Quotes about thinking

“There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.”

“The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.”

"I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist" (2008)
Context: There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.
But it is true that in an interview I gave recently I did describe a sudden, distinct feeling I had one hectic day that everything I was doing was right and things were happening as they should.
It seemed like the memory of a voice and it came wrapped in its own brief little bubble of tranquillity. I'm not used to this.
As a fantasy writer I create fresh gods and philosophies almost with every new book … But since contracting Alzheimer's disease I have spent my long winter walks trying to work out what it is that I really, if anything, believe.

Terry Pratchett book Monstrous Regiment

Source: Monstrous Regiment

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

“DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”

“Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?”

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Terry Pratchett book Monstrous Regiment

Source: Monstrous Regiment

“We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

Terry Pratchett: Trending quotes

“No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled.
"Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?"
"What?"
"Oh, you'd like something simpler?”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”

Terry Pratchett book Going Postal

Source: Going Postal

“And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be
living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got
you invited to the very best social occasions.”

Terry Pratchett book Feet of Clay

Source: Feet of Clay

Terry Pratchett Quotes

“Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.”

“Tolkien's dead. J. K. Rowling said no. Philip Pullman couldn't make it. Hi, I'm Terry Pratchett.”

“Don't be smart. Smart is only a polished version of dumb. Try intelligence. It will surely see you through.”

t-shirt worn by Pratchett at conventions https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/stephen-mcginty-sir-terry-pratchett-a-class-act-1-3718745 https://books.google.ca/books?id=n78kYbvUd_8C&pg=PA230&lpg=PA230&dq=%22tolkien%27s+dead%22+pratchett+shirt&source=bl&ots=uosL5-E7O9&sig=rMN8J7liwEBmaE92G4EWLunv2wk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjBmL6nr-DbAhUB6YMKHd9XALoQ6AEIoAEwGQ#v=onepage&q=%22tolkien's%20dead%22%20pratchett%20shirt&f=false Misc

“If Not You, Who Else?”

Terry Pratchett book Only You Can Save Mankind

Source: Only You Can Save Mankind

“I would like you to teach [the orcs] civilised behaviour," said Ladyship coldly.

He appeared to consider this. "Yes of course, I think that would be quite possible," he said. "And who would you send to teach the humans?”

Source: Unseen Academicals

“This book had two authors, and they were both the same person.”

Source: Unseen Academicals

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Author's note, revised edition (1992).
The Carpet People (1971; 1992)
Source: A Hat Full of Sky

“I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

“Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.”

“She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?'
'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.”

Terry Pratchett book I Shall Wear Midnight

Source: I Shall Wear Midnight

“What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.”

Terry Pratchett book Going Postal

Source: Going Postal

“I tell you, commander, it's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.”

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

“… Granny Weatherwax, who had walked nightly without fear in the bandit-haunted forests of the mountains all her life in the certain knowledge that the darkness held nothing more terrible than she was…”

“And when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that unhappiness as far as possible.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

“The Librarian was not familiar with love, which had always struck him as a bit ethereal and soppy, but kindness, on the other hand, was practical. You knew where you were with kindness, especially if you were holding a pie it had just given you.”

“…'I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved.'

'Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair,'said Lu Tze. 'He says the hair is a separate creature that just happens to live on him.”

Source: Unseen Academicals

Terry Pratchett book Thief of Time

Source: Thief of Time

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”

Terry Pratchett book Thief of Time

Source: Thief of Time

“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes before you die. That is true, it's called Life.”

“In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”

General sources
Variant: It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. This is in fact true. It's called living.
Source: The Last Continent

“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”

Pratchett is credited as author of this, as quoted in Ghost Cats : Human Encounters with Feline Spirits (2007) by Dusty Rainbolt, p. 7, and in Chicken Soup for the Soul : What I Learned from the Cat (2009) by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Amy Newmark
Quote attributed to unknown author, in Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Cats : And the People Who Love Them (2004) by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Sharon J. Wohlmuth, p. 1
General sources
Variant: In ancient times, cats were worshiped as gods. They have never forgotten this.

“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

“Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.”

Terry Pratchett book Eric

Source: Eric

“Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel?”

“She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.”

A similar remark was reportedly made by Pratchett in The Herald (4 October 2004): I'd rather be a climbing ape than a falling angel.
"I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist" (2008)
Context: Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn't take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.

“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Variant: It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works.
Source: A Hat Full of Sky

“Sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove.”

Terry Pratchett book The Truth

Source: The Truth

“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.
But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

Terry Pratchett book Mort

Source: Mort

“Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

“A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?”

“The wages of sin is death but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays.”

Interview, quoted in "Words from the Master" http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/books/apf/words-from-the-master.html in The Annotated Pratchett File http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/books/apf/index.html General sources Context: As for The Mapp... I suspect it'll never get a US publication. It seemed to frighten US publishers. They don't seem to understand it. That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans: A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him? I make no suggestion that one side or the other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true.

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

“There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

“I don't think I've drunk enough beer to understand that.”

“… the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe.”

Source: The Last Continent

“What're quantum mechanics?"

"I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose.”

Source: The Last Continent

Terry Pratchett book Eric

Source: Eric

“And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to 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.”

“Once upon a time the plural of 'wizard' was 'war'.”

Source: Unseen Academicals

“These people were not only cheering, they were throwing flowers and hats. The hats were made of stone, but the thought was there.”

Source: The Last Continent

Terry Pratchett book Eric

Source: Eric

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir, and I wouldn’t trust me one little inch, sir. I knows a bad one when I sees them. I have a mirror.”

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

“(About sweeping)….
What he was in FACT doing was moving the dirt around with a broom, to give it a change of scenery and a chance to make new friends.”

Terry Pratchett book Maskerade

Source: Maskerade

“On the fifth day the Governor of the town called all the tribal chieftains to an audience in the market square, to hear their grievances. He didn't always do anything about them, but at least they got heard, and he nodded a lot, and everyone felt better about it at least until they got home. This is politics.”

Terry Pratchett book The Carpet People

The Carpet People (1971; 1992)

“Everything makes sense a bit at a time. But when you try to think of it all at once, it comes out wrong.”

Terry Pratchett book Only You Can Save Mankind

Only You Can Save Mankind (1992)

“AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.

Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.

The End.”

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”

Death

Terry Pratchett book Diggers

The Nome Trilogy (1989 - 1990)
Variant: The problem with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and putting things in it.
Source: Diggers (1990)

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

“It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.”

“If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.”