Quotes by Terry Pratchett

He stared at his feet. “I’m still very ignorant,” he said, “but at least I’m ignorant about really important things.

Would a minute have mattered? No, probably not, although his young son appeared to have a very accurate internal clock. Possibly even 2 minutes would be okay. Three minutes, even. You could go to five minutes, perhaps. But that was just it. If you could go for five minutes, then youd go to ten, then half an hour, a couple of hours...and not see your son all evening. So that was that. Six oclock, prompt. Every day. Read to young Sam. No excuses. Hed promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.

YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.So we can believe the big ones?YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

I DONT KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.

Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage.

Have a chocolate-covered raisin,” he said.“They look like rat droppings,” said the Chair.The Dean peered at them in the gloom.“So that’s it,” he said. “The bag fell on the floor a minute ago, and I thought there seemed rather a lot.

D’yer see it? This finger, laddie, could send ye to meet yer Maker!”Sgt. Deisenburger stared at the black and purple nail a few inches from his face. As an offensive weapon it rated quite highly, especially if it was ever used in the preparation of food.

Silence fell like a hammer made of feathers. It left holes in the shape of the sound of the sea.

A mirror can contain the reflection of the whole universe, a whole skyful of stars in a piece of silvered glass no thicker than a breath.

The thing is, I mean, there’s times when you look at the universe and you think, “What about me?” and you can just hear the universe replying, “Well, what about you?”

She waited with Billy Slick while Carrot went on the errand, and for something to say, she said, ‘Billy Slick doesn’t sound much like a goblin name?’ Billy made a face. ‘Too right! Granny calls me Of the Wind Regretfully Blown. What kind of name is that, I ask you? Who’s going to take you seriously with a name like that? This is modern times, right?’ He looked at her defiantly, and she thought: and so one at a time we all become human – human werewolves, human dwarfs, human trolls... the melting pot melts in one direction only, and so we make progress.

I believe the term is ‘eminent domain.’Ah, yes. That means ‘theft by the government,

Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of ‘democracy’ with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straight away.

Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off the dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault.

Is that all, sir? Only weve got stuff to finish before our knocking-off time, you see, and if we stay late we have to make more money to pay our overtime, and if the lads is a bit tired we ends up earning the money fastern we can make it, which leads to a bit of what I can only call a conundrum—You mean that if you do overtime you have to do more overtime to pay for it? said Moist, still pondering how illogical logical thinking can be if a big enough committee is doing it.Thats right, sir, said Shady. And down that road madness lies.Its a very short road, said Moist, nodding.

Of all the forces in the universe, the hardest to overcome is the force of habit.

Is It Frightening To Be Free?You said it.You Say To People Throw Off Your Chains And They Make New Chains For Themselves?Seems to be a major human activity, yes.

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.

On the Disc the gods dealt severely with atheists.

The gods had a habit of going round to atheists houses and smashing their windows.