Terry Pratchett Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.

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.

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?

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

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.

An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards.

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.

Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.

A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.

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!

It's still magic even if you know how it's done.

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

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

There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.

This book was written using 100% recycled words.

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

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.

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

Anyway, if you stop tellin' people it's all sorted out afer they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.

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.

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

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

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

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

Did I do anything last night that suggested I was sane?

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

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.

Sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove.

The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown; and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality.

If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story.

The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.

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.

There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do.

You're Hell's Angels, then? What chapter are you from?' 'REVELATIONS. CHAPTER SIX.

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

Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.

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.

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

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.

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.

The enemy isn't men, or women, it's bloody stupid people and no one has the right to be stupid.

Even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility.

All tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.

People couldn't become truly holy, he said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked.

Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.

I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers... this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted.

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.

Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

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.

But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions.

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...

There's a door." "Where does it go?" "It stays where it is, I think.

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.

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

In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.

Insanity is catching.

Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it." "No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.

When in doubt, choose to live.

Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.

Progress just means bad things happen faster.

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.

25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying 'Where is the flaming sword that was given unto thee?' 26 And the Angel said, 'I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.' 27 And the Lord did not ask him again.

Aziraphale collected books. If he were totally honest with himself he would have to have admitted that his bookshop was simply somewhere to store them. He was not unusual in this. In order to maintain his cover as a typical second-hand book seller, he used every means short of actual physical violence to prevent customers from making a purchase. Unpleasant damp smells, glowering looks, erratic opening hours - he was incredibly good at it.

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.

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. 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.

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

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.

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.

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.

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer? And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye.

Witches are naturally nosy,” said Miss Tick, standing up. “Well, I must go. I hope we shall meet again. I will give you some free advice, though.” “Will it cost me anything?” “What? I just said it was free!” said Miss Tick. “Yes, but my father said that free advice often turns out to be expensive,” said Tiffany. Miss Tick sniffed. “You could say this advice is priceless,” she said, “Are you listening?” “Yes,” said Tiffany. “Good. 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. Goodbye.