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Quotations by Pratchett, Terry
If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago “Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world’s music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don’t have to die of dental abcesses and you don’t have to do what the squire tells you” they’d think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say ‘yes’.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
(Attributed)
Usually cited to alt.fan.pratchett, but not found in the repository.
Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
(Attributed)
There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
(Attributed)
There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
A Hat Full of Sky (2004)
There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
A Hat Full of Sky (2004)
THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT.
“Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.”
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Death’s Domain (1999)
(Source)
Death speaking with his manservant, Albert.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Diggers (1990)
She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Equal Rites (1987)
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.
Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It’s the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.
“Perhaps this isn’t just a test of the world,” said Crowley. “It might be a test of you people, too. Hmm?”
“God does not play games with His loyal servants,” said the Metatron, but in a worried tone of voice.
“Whooo-eee,” said Crowley. “Where have you been?”Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990)
(with Neil Gaiman)
“From what I remember,” replied Crowley, thoughtfully, “– and we were never actually on what you might call speaking terms — He wasn’t exactly one for a straight answer. In fact, in fact, he’d never answer at all. He’d just smile, as if He knew something that you didn’t.”
“And of course that’s true,” said the angel. “Otherwise, what’d be the point?”Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990)
(with Neil Gaiman)
In the end, as every human being who has ever breakfasted on their own in someone else’s kitchen has done since nearly the dawn of time, he made do with unsweetened instant black coffee.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990)
(with Neil Gaiman)
“I mean, maybe you just want to see how it all turns out. Maybe it’s all part of a great big ineffable plan. All of it. You, me, him, everything. Some great big test to see if what you’ve built all works properly, eh? You start thinking: it can’t be a great cosmic game of chess, it has to be just very complicated Solitaire. And don’t bother to answer. If we could understand, we wouldn’t be us. Because it’s all — all –”
INEFFABLE, said the figure feeding the ducks.Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990)
(with Neil Gaiman)
… God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players (i.e., everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990)
(with Neil Gaiman)
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990)
(with Neil Gaiman)
Armageddon only happens once, you know. They don’t let you go around again until you get it right.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990)
(with Neil Gaiman)
Hastur was paranoid, which was simply a sensible and well-adjusted reaction to living in Hell, where they really were all out to get you.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990)
(with Neil Gaiman)
If you take the long view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water-filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them. (Although, unless the ineffable plan is a lot more ineffable than it’s given credit for, it does not have a giant plastic snowman at the bottom.)
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990)
(with Neil Gaiman)
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. (This is not actually true. The road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door salesmen. On weekends many of the younger demons go ice-skating down it.)
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990)
(with Neil Gaiman)
“But the Great Plan can only be a tiny part of the overall ineffability,” said Crowley. “You can’t be certain that what’s happening right now isn’t exactly right, from an ineffable point of view.”
“It izz written!” bellowed Beelzebub.
“But it might be written differently somewhere else,” said Crowley. “Where you can’t read it.”
“In bigger letters,” said Aziraphale.
“Underlined,” Crowley added.
“Twice,” suggested Aziraphale.Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990)
(with Neil Gaiman)
Anyway, if you stop tellin’ people it’s all sorted out after they’re dead, they might try sorting it all out while they’re alive.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Good Omens (1990) [with Neil Gaiman]
It was a five hundred mile journey and, surprisingly, quite uneventful. People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, “Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Guards! Guards! (1989)
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn’t as cynical as real life.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Guards! Guards! (1989)
Never build a dungeon you wouldn’t be happy to spend the night in yourself. The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Guards! Guards! [Vetinari] (1989)
“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need … fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little –”
YES. AS PRACTICE. 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.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET — Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME … SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point –”
MY POINT EXACTLY.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Hogfather (1996)
Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
I Shall Wear Midnight (2010)
Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been fate. People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that’s a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events — the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there — that must also be a miracle. Just because it’s not nice doesn’t mean it’s not miraculous.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Interesting Times (1994)
The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Jingo (1997)
Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Jingo (1997)
Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Jingo (1999)
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Lords and Ladies (1992)
In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Lords and Ladies (1992)
Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Men at Arms (1993)
There was this about vampires: they could never look scruffy. Instead, they were … what was the word … deshabille. It meant untidy, but with bags and bags of style.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Monstrous Regiment (2003)
The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Monstrous Regiment (2003)
Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it’s the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it’s just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder. So let’s just say that Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colorful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.
Albert grunted. “Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?”
Mort thought for a moment. “No,” he said eventually, “what?”
There was silence.
Then Albert straightened up and said, “Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve ’em right.”
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Mort (1987)
Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Mort (1987)
In short, Mort was one of those people who are more dangerous than a bag full of rattlesnakes. He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe. Which was going to be hard, because there wasn’t one.
The Creator had a lot of remarkably good ideas when he put the world together, but making it understandable hadn’t been one of them.
It was crowded in the Curry Gardens on the corner of God Street and Blood Alley, but only with the cream of society — at least, with those people who are found floating on the top and who, therefore, it’s wisest to call the cream.
A faint smile hovered around the man’s lips. It was the sort of smile that lies on sandbanks waiting for incautious swimmers.
People don’t alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.
He’d been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Mort (1987)
People who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky end. All over the entire room, sometimes.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Moving Pictures (1990)
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Moving Pictures (1990)
Because inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Moving Pictures (1990)
The universe contains any amount of horrible ways to be woken up, such as the noise of the mob breaking down the front door, the scream of fire engines, or the realization that today is the Monday which on Friday night was a comfortably long way off. A dog’s wet nose is not strictly speaking the worst of the bunch, but it has its own peculiar dreadfulness which connoisseurs of the ghastly and dog owners everywhere have come to know and dread. It’s like having a small piece of defrosting liver pressed lovingly against you.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Moving Pictures (1990)
You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world? … It’s all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they’re really good at. It’s all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It’s all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad plowmen instead. It’s all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when it’s even possible to find out. It’s all the people who never get to know what it is that they can really be. It’s all the wasted chances.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Moving Pictures (1990)
His movements could be called cat-like, except that he did not stop to spray urine up against things.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Night Watch (2002)
We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Night Watch (2002)
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 (1948-2015) English author
Night Watch (2002)
“Huh! Priests!” said Mr. Shoe. “They’re all the same. Always telling you that you’re going to live again after you’re dead, but you just try it and see the look on their faces!”
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Reaper Man (1991)
It was later that the story of Windle Poons really came to an end, if “story” means all that he did and caused and set in motion. In the Ramtop village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away — until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Reaper Man (1991)
“Yo!” said the Dean.
“Yo what?” said Ridcully.
“It’s not a yo what, it’s just a yo,” said the Senior Wrangler, behind him. “It’s a general street greeting and affirmative with convivial military ingroup and masculine bonding-ritual overtones.”
“What? What? Like ‘jolly good’?” said Ridcully.
“I suppose so,” said the Senior Wrangler, reluctantly.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Reaper Man (1991)
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 (1948-2015) English author
Reaper Man (1991)
LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Reaper Man (1991)
Inside Every Living Person is a Dead Person Waiting to Get Out …
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Reaper Man (1991)
“They thought they were doing it for the best,” said Windle. “People often do. It’s amazing, the things that seem a good idea at the time.”
A lot of this was beyond him, but to people like Ridcully this didn’t matter for very long. Ridcully was simple-minded. This doesn’t mean stupid. It just meant that he could only think properly about things if he cut away all the complicated bits around the edges.
“You’re not one of us.”
“I don’t think I’m one of them, either,” said Brutha. “I’m one of mine.”
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Small Gods (1992)
His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools — the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans — and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, “You can’t trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s have a drink.”
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Small Gods (1992)
Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Small Gods (1992)
Satchelmouth was by no means averse to the finger-foxtrot and the skull fandango, but he’d never murdered anyone, at least on purpose. Satchelmouth had been made aware that he had a soul and, though it had a few holes in it and was a little ragged around the edges, he cherished the hope that some day the god Reg would find him a place in a celestial combo. You didn’t get the best gigs if you were a murderer. You probably had to play the viola.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Soul Music (1994)
“I meant,” said Ipslore bitterly, “what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?”
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually, CATS ARE NICE
“And what would humans be without love?”
RARE, said Death.
If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (2001)
He’d noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination — but at the end of the day they’d settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
The Fifth Elephant (1999)
But still, one of the most basic rules for survival on any planet is never to upset someone wearing black leather.*
*This is why protesters against the wearing of animal skins by humans unaccountably fail to throw their paint over Hell’s Angels.Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
The Last Continent (1998)
A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal sized billiard balls.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
The Light Fantastic (1986)
Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out,” said the shopkeeper. “That’s what I’ve always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.”
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
The Light Fantastic (1986)
Be careful. People like to be told what they already know. Remember that. They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things … well, new things aren’t what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don’t want to know that man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds … Not news but olds, telling people that what they think they already know is true.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
The Truth (2000) [Lord Vetinari]
“Now … if you trust in yourself …”
“Yes?”
“… and believe in your dreams …”
“Yes?”
“… and follow your star …” Miss Tick went on.
“Yes?”
“… you’ll still be beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
The Wee Free Men (2003)
Them as can do has to do for them as can’t. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
The Wee Free Men (2003)
“I can see we’re going to get along like a house on fire,” said Miss Tick. “There may be no survivors.”
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
The Wee Free Men (2003)
“We canna just rush in, ye ken.”
A big bearded Feegle raised his hand. “Point ‘o order, Big Man. Ye can just rush in. We always just rush in.”
“Aye, Big Yan, point well made. But ye gotta know where ye’re just gonna rush in. Ye cannae just rush in anywhere. It looks bad, havin’ to rush oout again straight awa’.”
Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Thief of Time (2001)
Susan stopped. Of course someone would be that stupid. Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Thief of Time (2001)
It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Thief of Time (2001)
“The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord.”
Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. “Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one.”
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Unseen Academicals (2009)
It would be a pretty good bet that the gods of a world like this probably do not play chess and indeed this is the case. In fact no gods anywhere play chess. They haven’t got the imagination. Gods prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight To Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god’s idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
A European says: I can’t understand this, what’s wrong with me? An American says: I can’t understand this, what’s wrong with him? I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Interview
The thing about Tom Clancy is that you can start reading a Tom Clancy book when the plane takes off in London and you’re still reading it when the plane lands in Sydney. And then you can use it to beat snakes to death.
The way of the portable computer user is as a stony path strewn with plugs and sockets, all the wrong size.
Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Post, alt.fan.pratchett
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.
Too many people want to have written.
I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.
However, you do need rules. Driving on the left (or the right or, in parts of Europe, on the left and the right as the mood takes you) is a rule which works, since following it means you’re more likely to reach your intended rather than your final destination.
Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.
Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil … prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon …
This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.
That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans:
A European says: I can’t understand this, what’s wrong with me?
An American says: I can’t understand this, what’s wrong with him?