Terry Pratchett Quotes - Page 8

That's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next.
Terry Pratchett
It's still magic even if you know how it's done.
Terry Pratchett
The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.
Terry Pratchett
The coach passed by many buildings of this sort, which would no doubt be little palaces to the occupants, who had escaped from Cockbill Street and Pigsty Hill and all the other neighbourhoods where people still dreamed that they could ‘better themselves’, an achievement that might be attained, oh happy day, when they had ‘a little place of their own’. It was an inspiring dream, if you didn’t look too deeply into words like mortgage and repayments and repossession and bankruptcy, and the lower middle classes of Ankh-Morpork, who saw themselves as being trodden on by the class above and illegally robbed by the one below, lined up with borrowed money to purchase, by instalments, their own little Oi Dong
Terry Pratchett
You didn’t warn us about this, Readier,’ said Stowley resentfully.Gilt waved his hands. ‘We must speculate to accumulate!’ he said. ‘The Post Office? Trickery and sleight of hand. Oh, von Lipwig is an ideas man, but that’s all he is. He’s made a splash, but he’s not got the stamina for the long haul. Yet as it turns out he will do us a favour. Perhaps we have been . . . a little smug, a little lax, but we have learned our lesson! Spurred by the competition we are investing several hundred thousand dollars—’‘Several hundred?’ said Greenyham.Gilt waved him into silence, and continued: ‘—several hundred thousand dollars in a challenging, relevant and exciting systemic overhaul of our entire organization, focusing on our core competencies while maintaining full and listening co-operation with the communities we are proud to serve. We fully realize that our energetic attempts to mobilize the flawed infrastructure we inherited have been less than totally satisfactory, and hope and trust that our valued and loyal customers will bear with us in the coming months as we interact synergistically with change management in our striving for excellence. That is our mission.’An awed silence followed.
Terry Pratchett
The Fool held his breath. On long nights on the hard flagstones he had dreamed of women like her. Although, if he really thought about it, not much like her; they were better endowed around the chest, their noses weren’t so red and pointed, and their hair tended to flow more. But the Fool’s libido was bright enough to tell the difference between the impossible and the conceivably attainable, and hurriedly cut in some filter circuits.
Terry Pratchett
We're dealing here," said Vimes, "With a twisted mind.""Oh, no! You think so?""Yes.""But... no... you can't be right. Because Nobby was with us all the time.""Not Nobby," said Vimes testily. "Whatever he might do to a dragon, I doubt if he'd make it explode. There's stranger people in this world than Corporal Nobbs, my lad."Carrot's expression slid into a rictus of intrigued horror."Gosh," he said.
Terry Pratchett
It's an unfair world, Child. Be glad you have friends.
Terry Pratchett
Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still alive.
Terry Pratchett
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?
Terry Pratchett
Dullness. Only humans could have invented it. What imaginations they had.
Terry Pratchett
Who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men? A copper, that's who. (...)You saw how close men lived to the beast. You realized that people like Carcer were not mad. They were incredibily sane. They were simply men without a shield. They'd looked at the world and realized that all the rules didn't have to apply to them, not if they didn't want them to. They weren't fooled by all the little stories. They shook hands with the beast.
Terry Pratchett
We all think we understand each other,' Kin heard Silver say. 'We eat together, we trade, many of us pride ourselves on having alien friends - but all this is only possible, only possible, Kin, because we do not fully comprehend the other. You've studied Earth history. Do you think you could understand the workings of of the mind of a Japanese warrior a thousand years ago? But he is as a twin to you compare with Marco, or with myself. When we use the word "cosmopolitan" we use it too lightly - it's flippant, it means we're galactic tourists who communicate in superficialities. We don't comprehend. Different worlds, Kin. Different anvils of gravity and radiation and evolution.
Terry Pratchett
Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?‘Yes. Yes, of course.’Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.
Terry Pratchett
Daphne’s thought in Nation: This was no time to go totally mad. You had to maintain standards.
Terry Pratchett
The end of times?" said Nanny. "Look, Tiff, Esme tol' me to say, if you want to see Esmerelda Weatherwax, then just you look around. She is here. Us witches don't mourn for very long. We are satisfied with happy memories - they're there to be cherished.
Terry Pratchett
Tiffany thought of the little spot in the woods where Granny Weatherwax lay. Remembered. And knew that You had been right. Granny Weatherwax was indeed here. And there. She was, in fact, and always would be, everywhere.
Terry Pratchett
Tiffany found her mind filling up with an invisible gray mist, and in that thought there was nothing but grief. She could feel herself trying to push back time, but even the best witchcraft could not do that.
Terry Pratchett
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
After all, if you can't trust governments, whom can you trust?
Terry Pratchett
You trust him?" he said. "No," said Hastur. "Right," said Ligur. It's be a funny old world, he reflected, if demons went round trusting one another.
Terry Pratchett
If Vorbis was right, and there was a kind of light that made darkness visible, then down there was its opposite, the darkness where no light could ever reach: darkness that blackened light, He thought of blind Didactylos and his empty lantern.
Terry Pratchett
These were dangerous thoughts, he knew. They were the kind that crept up on a Watchman when the chase was over and it was just you and him, facing one another in that breathless little pinch between the crime and the punishment.And maybe a Watchman had seen civilization with the skin ripped off one time too many and stopped acting like a Watchman and started acting like a normal human being and realized that the click of the crossbow or the sweep of the sword would make all the world so clean.And you couldn’t think like that, even about vampires. Even though they’d take the lives of other people because little lives don’t matter and what the hell can we take away from them?And, too, you couldn’t think like that because they gave you a sword and a badge and that turned you into something else and that had to mean there were some thoughts you couldn’t think.Only crimes could take place in darkness. Punishment had to be done in the light. That was the job of a good Watchman, Carrot always said. To light a candle in the dark.
Terry Pratchett
Practically anything can go faster than Disc light, which is lazy and tame, unlike ordinary light. The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no cap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. presumably, he said, these must be some elementary particles - kingons, or possibly queons - that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plan to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expounded because, at that point, the bar closed.
Terry Pratchett
Esk felt that bravery was called for, but on a night like this bravery lasted only as long as a candle stayed alight.
Terry Pratchett
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
Terry Pratchett
Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them.
Terry Pratchett
I heard this story once," she said, "where this bloke got locked up for years and years and he learned amazin' stuff about the universe and everythin' from another prisoner who was incredibly clever, and then he escaped and got his revenge.""What incredibly clever stuff do you know about the universe, Gytha Ogg?" said Granny."Bugger all," said Nanny cheerfully."Then we'd better bloody well escape right now.
Terry Pratchett
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.
Terry Pratchett
People said there had to be a Supreme Being because otherwise how could the universe exist, eh?And of course there clearly had to be, said Koomi, a Supreme Being. But since the universe was a bit of a mess, it was obvious that the Supreme Being hadn't in fact made it. If he had made it he would, being Supreme, have made a better job of it, with far better thought given, taking an example at random, to things like the design of the common nostril. Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. You only had to look around to see that there was room for improvement practically everywhere. This suggested that the Universe had probably been put together in a bit of a rush by an underling while the Supreme Being wasn't looking, in the same way that Boy Scouts' Association minutes are done on office photocopiers all over the country.So, reasoned Koomi, it was not a good idea to address any prayers to a Supreme Being. It would only attract his attention and might cause trouble.
Terry Pratchett
Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.
Terry Pratchett
Words have power, you understand? It is in the nature of our universe. Our library itself distorts time and space on quite a grand scale. Well, when the Post Office started accumulating letters, it was storing words. In fact, what was being created was what we call a 'gevaisa', a tomb of living words.
Terry Pratchett
... a man needs no camel to ride to hell, yea, nor horse, nor mule; a man may ride into hell on his tongue...
Terry Pratchett
To animals they were just the weather, just part of everything. But humans arose and gave them names, just as people filled the starry sky with heroes and monsters, because this turned them into stories. And humans loved stories, because once you'd turned things into stories, you could change the stories.
Terry Pratchett
A witch relied too much on words ever to go back on them.
Terry Pratchett
Lord Vetinari in a meeting: “what people said was what they wanted him to hear. He paid a lot of attention to the spaces outside the words, though. That’s where the things were that they hoped he didn’t know and didn’t want him to find out.
Terry Pratchett
WORDS IN THE HEART CANNOT BE TAKEN.
Terry Pratchett
Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.
Terry Pratchett
He knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the ineffable wisdom and judgment of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually had to kill them before they saw the error of their ways...
Terry Pratchett
Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.
Terry Pratchett
And Dil was realizing that there are few things that so shake belief as seeing, clearly and precisely, the object of that belief. Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed anymore.
Terry Pratchett
Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.
Terry Pratchett
Drought-struck farmers pray for rain, in the express hope that the universe or owner thereof will hear the words and suspense the laws of meteorology for their benefit. Some, of course, actually believe just that, and for all anyone can prove they could be right.
Terry Pratchett
Gods didn’t mind atheists, if they were deep, hot, fiery, atheists like Simony, who spend their whole life hating gods for not existing. That sort of atheism was a rock. It was nearly belief …
Terry Pratchett
Polly?' Said Wazzer. 'Yes?''You don't believe in The Duchess, do you? I mean the real Duchess, not your inn.'Polly looked into the small, pinched, intense face. 'Well I mean, they say she's dead, and I prayed to her when I was small, but since you asked I don't exactly, um, believe as-' She gabbled.'She is standing just behind you. Just behind your right shoulder.'In the silence of the wood, Polly turned. 'I can't see her,' she said.'I am happy for you,' said Wazzer, handing her the empty mug.'But I didn't see anything,' said Polly.'No,' said Wazzer. 'But you turned around.
Terry Pratchett
But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg. "That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.
Terry Pratchett
Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can.People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. They think the sequence is, first object, then belief. In fact, it works the other way.
Terry Pratchett
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM?"Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?"NO"Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact."THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN...."Really? Then what would have happened, pray?"A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.
Terry Pratchett
There’s no point in believing in things that exist.
Terry Pratchett
IT'S THE EXPRESSION ON THEIR LITTLE FACES I LIKE, said the Hogfather. "You mean sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants?" YES. NOW THAT IS WHAT I CALL BELIEF.
Terry Pratchett
I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult," said Granny firmly. "Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in trouble.""But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg."That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.
Terry Pratchett
And the people of Ankh-Morpork are so thirsty for novelty that the whole city is, you might say, hurrying the future along for the sheer joy of watching its progress.
Terry Pratchett
Plans can break down. You cannot plan the future. Only presumptuous fools plan. The wise man steers.
Terry Pratchett
The beagle and the kobold approached, walking out of the dusty distance.
Terry Pratchett
Destiny was funny stuff, he knew. You couldn’t trust it. Often you couldn’t even see it. Just when you knew you had it cornered, it turned out to be something else—coincidence, maybe, or providence. You barred the door against it, and it was standing behind you. Then just when you thought you had it nailed down it walked away with the hammer.
Terry Pratchett
You mean it's my destiny? she said at last.Granny shrugged. Something like that. Probably. Who knows?
Terry Pratchett
You mean it's my destiny?" she said at last.Granny shrugged. “Something like that. Probably. Who knows?
Terry Pratchett
Everybody has somebody. It could be a friend, a lover, a spouse, a writing partner, or even That One Person You See At The Coffee Shop each day. Sometimes they exist to comfort you. Sometimes they exist to drive you absolutely mad. Be open to either as a form of self-improvement.
Terry Pratchett
I really should talk to him. He's had a near-death experience!”"We all have. It's called living."(Hogfather)
Terry Pratchett
We're living in science fiction, but we don't realize it.
Terry Pratchett