Terry Pratchett: Trending quotes (page 35)

Terry Pratchett trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
Terry Pratchett: 1592   quotes 895   likes

“Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it."

"No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

“Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Cited in Power Quotes: For Life, Business, and Leadership (2018) by Danai Krokou, ISBN 1-63157-750-6
General sources
Source: Wyrd Sisters

Time , Dreams

“Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Study , Time

“Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

“Progress just means bad things happen faster.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

“All tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.”

Terry Pratchett

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

Cars

“In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.”

Terry Pratchett book Soul Music

Source: Soul Music

Hate , Books , Literature , Reading

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

Terry Pratchett

Variant: It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
Source: Men at Arms: The Play

Light

“But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions.”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

Boy

“Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

Angels

“Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.”

Terry Pratchett Thud!

Source: Thud!

Way , Coffee , Time

“Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax couldin a cutting way. She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it.”

Terry Pratchett
People , Stupidity , Way

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away…”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

World , Dead

“What have I always believed?
That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

“Insanity is catching.”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

“If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on.”

Terry Pratchett book The Carpet People

The Carpet People (1971; 1992)
Context: They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.
It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on.

Thinking

“If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.”

Terry Pratchett

Final lines of his Richard Dimbleby lecture Shaking Hands With Death on euthanasia and assisted suicide, quoted in "Terry Pratchett: my case for a euthanasia tribunal" in The Guardian (2 February 2010) http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/02/terry-pratchett-assisted-suicide-tribunal
General sources
Context: I dare say that quite a few people have contemplated death for reasons that much later seemed to them to be quite minor. If we are to live in a world where a socially acceptable "early death" can be allowed, it must be allowed as a result of careful consideration.
Let us consider me as a test case. As I have said, I would like to die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod before the disease takes me over and I hope that will not be for quite some time to come, because if I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.

Life , Death

“It's just that it's dawned on me that 'zero tolerance' only seems to mean putting extra police in poor, run-down areas, and not in the Stock Exchange.”

Terry Pratchett

Usenet
Context: Oh dear, I'm feeling political today. It's just that it's dawned on me that 'zero tolerance' only seems to mean putting extra police in poor, run-down areas, and not in the Stock Exchange.