Terry Pratchett Quotes: 117

• The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

  Diggers

• It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.

• 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.

  Jingo

• 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.

  Thief of Time

• It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.

  The Last Continent

• Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.

• If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.

  Lords and Ladies

• 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.

  A Hat Full of Sky

• In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

• Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.

  Small Gods

• Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.

• In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

  Lords and Ladies

• It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.

• 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.

  Sourcery

• 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.

  Reaper Man

• DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.

  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

• If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.

• Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

  Reaper Man

• I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

• 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.

  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

• And what would humans be without love?"RARE, said Death.

  Sourcery

• 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?

  Night Watch

• It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever,"he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?

  Mort

• I'd rather be a rising ape than a falling angel.

• 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.

  Moving Pictures

• 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!

  The Color of Magic

• He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.

  Mort

• 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.

  Hogfather

• Death: "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT."Albert: "Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.

• We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

• 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.

  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

• The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.

  Monstrous Regiment

• HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)

  Hogfather

• This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.

• We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.

  Night Watch

• This book was written using 100% recycled words.

  Wyrd Sisters

• 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.

  Guards! Guards!

• Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.

  Jingo

• ...inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.

  Moving Pictures

• Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?

  Monstrous Regiment

• Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?

  Going Postal

• The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.

  Equal Rites

• 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.

  Mort

• In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of thecat, although in this case there were three determinate states the catcould be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.

  Lords and Ladies

• 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.

  Unseen Academicals

• What have I always believed?That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.

  Small Gods

• Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax could listen in a cutting way. She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it.

• Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.

  Thud!

• 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.

  Jingo

• Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.

  Reaper Man

• 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.

  Wyrd Sisters

• Progress just means bad things happen faster.

  Witches Abroad

• No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away...

  Reaper Man

• Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

  Wyrd Sisters

• The trouble is you can shut your eyes but you can’t shut your mind.

  Wintersmith

• When in doubt, choose to live.

  Thief of Time

• My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage at all pedestrians while ringing their bell loudly, the concept of avoiding people being foreign to them.My dream holiday would be a) a ticket to Amsterdam b) immunity from prosecution and c) a baseball bat.

• I get it,' said the prisoner. 'Good Cop, Bad Cop, eh?'If you like.' said Vimes. 'But we're a bit short staffed here, so if I give you a cigarette would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth?

  Night Watch

• What's a philosopher?' said Brutha.Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,' said a voice in his head.

  Small Gods

• Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them

  Hogfather

• YOU FEAR TO DIE?"It's not that I don't want... I mean, I've always...it's just that life is a habit that's hard to break...

  Reaper Man

• The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head.

• I DON'T HOLD WITH CRUELTY TO CATS.

  The Last Hero

• Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

  The Color of Magic

• The purpose of this lectchoor is to let you know where we are. We are in the deep cack. It couldn't be worse if it was raining arseholes. Any questions?

  Monstrous Regiment

• Lots of people would be as cowardly as me if they were brave enough.

  The Last Hero

• Perhaps it would be simpler if you just did what you're told and didn't try to understand things.

  Sourcery

• Books must be treated with respect, we feel that in our bones, because words have power. Bring enough words together they can bend space and time.

• A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.

  The Truth

• Speak softly and employ a huge man with a crowbar.

  Going Postal

• Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.

  Small Gods

• This was not a fairy-tale castle and there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the ham-and-eggs.

  Monstrous Regiment

• The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.

  Small Gods

• On the Disc, the Gods aren't so much worshipped, as they are blamed.

  The Color of Magic

• It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive.

  Soul Music

• Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.

  Small Gods

• The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).

  Small Gods

• No it's not!"said Constable Visit. "Atheism is a denial of a god." "Therefore It Is A Religious Position,"said Dorfl. "Indeed, A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheist Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny.

  Feet of Clay

• The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

• We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork.

  Small Gods

• She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it.

  Soul Music

• ...it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.

  Equal Rites

• It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.

  The Color of Magic

• The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish.

  Small Gods

• I’m not superstitious. I’m a witch. Witches aren’t superstitious. We are what people are superstitious of.

  Wintersmith

• It looked like the sort of book described in library catalogues as 'slightly foxed', although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.

  The Light Fantastic

• Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.

  Witches Abroad

• Every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life.

  The Color of Magic

• There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.

  Small Gods

• You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.IT'S EDUCATIONAL.'What if she cuts herself?'THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.

  Hogfather

• There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.Someone had stolen a book.

  Guards! Guards!

• Granny was an old-fashioned witch. She didn’t do good for people, she did right by them.

  Carpe Jugulum

• And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it's gone.

  Wintersmith

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

• You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just . . . is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbors.

  Carpe Jugulum

• If you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.

  I Shall Wear Midnight

• The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.

  Small Gods

• In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

• [Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it!

• First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft.

• Truth! Freedom! Justice! And a hard-boiled egg!

  Night Watch

• IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT /MEANT/ TO BE SAFE.

• 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.

  The Truth

• When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.

  Small Gods

• But is all this true?"said Brutha.Didactylos shrugged. "Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork." "You mean you don't KNOW it's true?"said Brutha."I THINK it might be,"said Didactylos. "I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.

  Small Gods

• The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.

  Soul Music

• Be careful what you wish for. You never know who will be listening.

  Soul Music

• I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.

• God does not play games with His loyal servants", said the Metatron, but in a worried tone of voice."Whoopee", said Crowley.

  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

• I wonder if it's like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it’s so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you'll die falling.

  Going Postal

• Preston, I don't think this creature could ever find its way into your head. Quite apart from anything else, it seems pretty crowded and complicated to me.

  I Shall Wear Midnight

• It was then that Marvin got religion. Not the quiet, personal kind, that involves doing good deeds and living a better life; not even the kind that involves putting on a suit and ringing' people's doorbells; but the kind that involves having your own TV network and getting people to send you money.

  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

• Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot.

  The Last Continent

• That’s what being alive is, Thing! It’s being badly prepared for everything! Because you only get one chance, Thing!

  Diggers

• Then Carrot said, "It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, captain. That's what they say." "What?"Vimes sudden rage was like a thunderclap. "Who says that? When has that ever been true? It's never been true! It's the kind of thing people without power say to make it all seem less bloody awful, but it's just words, it never makes any difference -

  Men at Arms

• Anyone with half a mind could see that,"said Tiffany.Miss Tick sighed. "Yes. But sometimes it's so hard to find half a mind when you need one.

• Какъв е смисъла на образованието - помисли си, - щом хората ще го ползват?

  The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents