Terry Pratchett Quotes

page 8

“He thought about how it might be to be, say, a fox confronted with an angry sheep. A sheep moreover, that could afford to employ wolves.”

“The important thing about adventures, thought Mr. Bunnsy, was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes.”

“Seeing things a human shouldn't have to see makes us human.”

“You know how to pray, don’t you? Just put your hands together and hope.”

“Oh. I see. People don't want to see what can't possibly exist.”

“Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them.”

“When I am old I shall wear midnight.”

“People don't like change. But make the change fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.”

“Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn't. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it.”

“It's lies. It's all lies. Some of them are just prettier than others, that's all. People see what they think is there.”

“The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.”

“Humanity's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.”

“The more you think about it, the more amazing the everyday world of human beings becomes: most of it doesn't actually exist at all.”

“They didn't have to be funny — they werejokes.”

“Life is a trick, and you get one chance to learn it.”

“You get a wonderful view from the point of no return.”

“If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter.”

“There is no doubt that being human is incredibly difficult and cannot be mastered in one lifetime.”

“If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.”

“Good or bad, do it as you. Too many lies and there's no truth to go back to.”

“Were you proposing to shoot these people in cold blood, sergeant?"
"Nossir. Just a warning shot inna head, sir.”

“Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos were lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor and shouting 'All Gods are bastards.”

“The thief, as will become apparent, was a special type of thief. This thief was an artist of theft. Other thieves merely stole everything that was not nailed down, but this thief stole the nails as well.”

“One day all of us will die but - and this is the important thing - we are not dead yet.”

“You'll see! We're going to the palace. Fetch Angua. We might need her. And bring the search warrant.
You mean the sledgehammer, sir?
Yes.”

“You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don't you?”

“If you try to to take my bananas from me, I will reclaim them from your cold dead hands.”

“And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.”

“Every step is a first step if it's a step in the right direction.”

“If he'd been a hero, he would have taken the opportunity to say, "That's what I call sorted!" Since he wasn't a hero, he threw up.”

“Tʜᴇʀᴇ's ɴᴏ ᴊᴜsᴛɪᴄᴇ, ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ's ᴊᴜsᴛ ᴍᴇ.

—Death”

“You take a bunch of people who don't seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.”

“It was nice to hear the voices of little children at play, provided you took care to be far enough away not to hear what they were actually saying.”

“Where's the pleasure in bein' the winner if the loser ain't alive to know they've lost?”

“Even in a dream, even at a posh ball, the Nac Mac Feegle knew how to behave. You charged in madly, and you screamed… politely. pommes frites”

“Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association.”

“Do you know how wizards like to be buried?"
"Yes!"
"Well, how?"
Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs.
"Reluctantly.”

“I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins.”

“but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?”

“WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN?

The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of the potato. SQUEAK, he said.

Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.”

“Once you gave a thing a name, you gave it life.”

“Your own brain ought to have the decency to be on your side!”

“What did they feed the lions and tigers with in the ark, sir?”

“Lessee… he'd gone off after the funeral and gotten drunk. No, not drunk, another word, ended with "er." Drunker. that was it.”

“The girls were expected to grow up to be somebody's wife. They were also expected to read and write, those being considered soft indoor jobs that were too fiddly for the boys.”

“It's daft, locking us up," said Nanny. "I'd have had us killed."
"That's because you're basically good," said Magrat. "The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.”

“… you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.”

“You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was, ‘But we’ve always done it this way.’ A million dead people can’t have been wrong, can they?”

“Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid.”