Terry Pratchett Quotes

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“If there were such a thing as an inter-city thieving contest, Ankh-Morpork would bring home the trophy and probably everyone’s wallets.”

“This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here.”

“It's like chess, you know. The Queen saves the King.”

“Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, but they seldom came near the village - the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.”

“These weren't encouraged in the city, since the heft and throw of a longbow's arrow could send it through an innocent bystander a hundred yards away instead of the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed.”

“He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority, and people could use terms like "core values" at him with impunity.”

“There is a curse.
They say:
May you live in interesting times.”

“Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.”

“But there was more to it than that. As the Amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats.”

“THERE'S NO JUSTICE, said Mort. JUST US.”

“Do you think there’s anything to eat in this forest?”
“Yes,” said the wizard bitterly, “us.”

“People's whole lives do pass in front of their eye before dying. The process is called "Living”

“That, lad," he said proudly, "was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul…. We'll make a gonnagle out of ye yet!”

“He felt as if he had been shipwrecked on the Titanic, but in the nick of time had been rescued. By the Lusitania.”

“In Ankh-Morpork you can be whoever you want to be and sometimes people laugh and sometimes they clap, and mostly and beautifully, they don't really care.”

“I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It's never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting "Forward, brave comrades!" you'll see he's the one behind the bloody big rock and the wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!”

“And our lady friend, she thinks life works like a fairy tale.'
Well, that’s harmless, isn’t it?'
Yeah, but in fairy tales, when someone dies… it’s just a word.”

“Although the scythe isn't pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome.”

“Yes, but humans are more important than animals,' said Brutha.
'This is a point of view often expressed by humans,' said Om.”

“Sometimes the only thing you could do for people was to be there.”

“I notice you didn't laugh, Mr. Black!
No, Your Majesty. We are forbidden to laugh at the things kings say, sire, because otherwise we would be at it all day.”

“Young man, the games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we change make us what we become.”

“That's the trouble, you see. When you've had hatred on your tongue for such a long time, you don't know how to spit it out.”

“He said that there was death and taxes, and taxes was worse, because at least death didn’t happen to you every year.”

“Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw.
It was its tendency to bend at the knees.”

“I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.”

“If women were as good as men they'd be a lot better!”

“Carpe Jugulum," read Agnes aloud. "That's… well, Carpe Diem is 'Sieze the Day,' so this means-"
"Go for the throat”

“Stand before your god, bow before your king, kneel before your man.”

“Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.”

“the IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters”

“The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.”

“Money makes people rich; it is a fallacy to think it makes them better, or even that it makes them worse. People are what they do, and what they leave behind.”

“Go anywhere you wish, talk to everyone. Ask any questions; you will be given answers. When you want to learn, you will be taught. Use the library. Open any book.”

“It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free.”

“For example, the dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way. The difference between that and the easy way is that the hard way works.”

“When Mister Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend.”

“You can't second-guess ineffability, I always say.”

“That's Third Thoughts for you. When a huge rock is going to land on your head, they're the thoughts that think: Is that an igneous rock, such as granite, or is it sandstone?”

“I'VE NEVER BEEN VERY SURE ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT, said Bill Door. I AM NOT SURE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS RIGHT. OR WRONG. JUST PLACES TO STAND.”

“When all else failed, she tried being reasonable.”

“Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular.”

“We live and learn, or, perhaps more importantly we learn and live.”

“Tell someone you are going to rob them and all that will happen is that you'll get a reputation as a truthful man.”

“Welcome to fear, said Moist to himself. It's hope, turned inside out. You know it can't go wrong, you're sure it can't go wrong… But it might.”

“I'm not a lady, I'm a witch.”

“But I think you have a right to know what it is you’re not being told.”

“I MAY HAVE ALLOWED MYSELF SOME FLICKER OF EMOTION IN THE RECENT PAST, said Death, BUT I CAN GIVE IT UP ANY TIME I LIKE.”

“Even with nougat, you can have a perfect moment.”