“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
“Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”
― Terry Pratchett
“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
“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.”
― Terry Pratchett
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
― Terry Pratchett
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett
“If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember.”
― Terry Pratchett
“In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”
― Terry Pratchett
“Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.”
― Terry Pratchett
“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”
― Terry Pratchett
“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.”
― Terry Pratchett
“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
― 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
“DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.”
― Terry Pratchett
“It’s not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren’t doing it.”
― Terry Pratchett
“If you have enough book space, I don’t want to talk to you.”
― Terry Pratchett
“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 variant 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
“Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.”
― Terry Pratchett
“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
“I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.”
― Terry Pratchett
“And what would humans be without love?”
RARE, said Death.”
― Terry Pratchett
“Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.”
― Terry Pratchett
“No! Please! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!” the man yelled.
“Really?” said Vimes. “What’s the orbital velocity of the moon?”
“What?”
“Oh, you’d like something simpler?”
― Terry Pratchett
“There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.”
― Terry Pratchett
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
― Terry Pratchett
“It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever,” he said. “Have you thought of going into teaching?”
― Terry Pratchett
“If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”
― Terry Pratchett
“Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It’s the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.”
― Terry Pratchett
“Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett
“A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.”
― Terry Pratchett
“She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.”
― Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
“Death: “THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT.”
Albert: “Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.”
― Terry Pratchett
“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
“I’d rather be a rising ape than a falling angel.”
― Terry Pratchett
“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
“Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.”
― Terry Pratchett
“If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting ‘All gods are bastards!”
― Terry Pratchett
“Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide.”
― Terry Pratchett
“It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done.”
― Terry Pratchett
“He’d been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.”
― Terry Pratchett
“HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)”
― Terry Pratchett
“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
“There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.”
― Terry Pratchett
“Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
― Terry Pratchett
“This book was written using 100% recycled words.”
― Terry Pratchett
“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
“…inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.”
― Terry Pratchett
“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
“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
“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”
― Terry Pratchett