Pratchett Quotes

“Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.”
― Terry Pratchett, Soul Music

“Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

“The fact is that camels are far more intelligent than dolphins. They are so much brighter that they soon realised that the most prudent thing any intelligent animal can do, if it would prefer its descendants not to spend a lot of time on a slab with electrodes clamped to their brains or sticking mines on the bottom of ships or being patronized rigid by zoologists, is to make bloody certain humans don't find out about it. So they long ago plumped for a lifestyle that, in return for a certain amount of porterage and being prodded with sticks, allowed them adequate food and grooming and the chance to spit in a human's eye and get away with it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Pyramids

“I'm your worst nightmare!' said Teatime cheerfully.
The man shuddered.
'You mean ... the one with the giant cabbage and the sort of whirring knife thing?'
'Sorry?' Teatime looked momentarily nonplussed.
'Then you're the one where I'm falling, only instead of the ground underneath it's all --'
'No. In fact I'm --'
The guard sagged. 'Awww, not the one where there's all this kind of, you know, mud and then everything goes blue --'
'No, I'm --'
'Oh, shit, then you're the one where there's this door only there's no floor beyond it and then there's these claws --'
'No,' said Teatime. 'Not that one.' He withdrew a dagger from his sleeve. 'I'm the one where this man comes out of nowhere and kills you, stone dead.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“Nanny Ogg usually went to bed early. After all, she was an old lady. Sometimes she went to bed as early as 6 a.m.”
― Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

“Hrun the Barbarian, who was practilly an academic by Hub standards in that he could think without moving his lips.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“Can't we do anything about it?"
- "No!"
- "Then I can't see the sense in panicking", said Twoflower calmly”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“The truly smart, having discovered they are cleverer than the people around them, soon learn that the smartest thing of all for them to do is to prevent said people from ever finding this out.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Long Cosmos

“Wizards had always known that the act of observation changed the thing that was observed, and sometimes forgot that it also changed the observer too.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Retrophrenology:
It works like this. Phrenology, as everyone knows, is a way of reading someone's character, aptitude and abilities by examining the bumps and hollows on their head. Therefore - according to the kind of logical thinking that characterizes the Ankh-Morpork mind - it should be possible to mould someone's character by giving them carefully graded bumps in all the right places. You can go into a shop and order an artistic temperament with a tendency to introspection and a side order of hysteria. What you actually get is hit on the head with a selection of different size mallets, but it creates employment and keeps the money in circulation, and that's the main thing.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

“He asked you to shoot at people who weren’t shooting back,” growled Vimes, striding forward, “That makes him insane, wouldn’t you say?”
“They are throwing stones, Sarge,” said Colon.
“So? Stay out of range. They’ll get tired before we do.”
― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

“When I'm old I shall wear midnight, she'd decided. But, for now, she'd had enough of darkness.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“So the fire and its subsequent flood, wich destroyed everything left that was not flammable and added a particularly noisome flux to the survivors'problems, did not mark its end. Rather it was a fiery punctuation mark, a coal-like comma, or salamander semicolon, in a continuing story.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone's mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

“There were lessons later on. These were going a lot better now she’d got rid of the reading books about bouncy balls and dogs called Spot. She’d got Gawain on to the military campaigns of General Tacticus, which were suitably bloodthirsty but, more importantly, considered too difficult for a child. As a result his vocabulary was doubling every week and he could already use words like ‘disembowelled’ in everyday conversation. After all, what was the point of teaching children to be children? They were naturally good at it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“Yeah!" said the Dean, now in a grip of a wild, unwizardly machismo. "We're mean! Yeah! Are we mean?"
The Archchancellor raised his eyebrows, and then turned to the rest of the wizards.
"Are we mean?" he said.
"Er.. I'm feeling reasonably mean," said the Lecturer of Recent Runes.
"I'm definitely very mean, I think," said the Bursar. "It's having no boots that does it," he added.
"I'll be mean if everyone else is," said the Senior Wrangler.
The Archchancellor turned back to the Dean.
"Yes," he said, "it appears that we are all mean."
"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, Reaper Man

“Have you ever really watched him? I bet he'd found out everything about Jabbar by the time he'd talked to him for ten minutes. I bet he knows the name of every camel. And he'll remember it all. People don't take that much interest in other people, usually.' Her fingers idly traced a pattern in the sand. 'So he makes you feel important.'
'Politicians do that-' Vimes began.
'Not the way he does, believe me. I expect Lord Vetinari remembers facts about people-'
'Oh, you'd better believe that!'
'-but Carrot takes an interest. He doesn't even think about it. He makes space in his head for people. He takes an interest, and so people think they're intesting. They feel... better when he's around.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“The year was past the edge, heading away from the dark... Of course, dark would come again, but that was in the nature of the world. Many things were beginning.”
― Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment

“Now Adam slouched alone along the dusty lane. It was a good slouch. Adam had a way of slouching along that offended all right-thinking people. It wasn't that he just allowed his body to droop. He could slouch with inflections, and now the set of his shoulders reflected the hurt and bewilderment of those unjustly thwarted in their selfless desire to help their fellow men.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Be generous, Sir Samuel. TRULY treat all men equally. Allow Klatchians the right to be scheming bastards, hmm?”
― Terry Pratchett

“Gods have no one to pray to.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Hah! Nearly everyone I knows is dead." Mr Weavall stared at the bunch of flowers for a while, then straightened up again. "Still, can't do nothin' about that, can we? Not even for a box of gold!"
"No, Mr Weavall," said Tiffany hoarsely.
"Oh, don't cry, gel! The sun is shinin', the birds is singin' and what's past can't be mended, eh?”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“A man sits in some museum somewhere and writes a harmless book about political economy and suddenly thousands of people who haven’t even read it are dying because the ones who did haven’t got the joke. Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain calibre.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Denn", so der trollische Philosoph Plateau, "wenn du verstehen willst einen Feind, du musst gehen eine Meile in seinen Schuhen. Wenn er dann ist noch immer dein Feind, du bist entfernt wenigstens eine Meile, und er keine Schuhe hat,”
― Terry Pratchett

“Tun? Wir sind das wichtigste magische Bildungsinstitut!", betonte Ridcully.
"Aber lehren wir?"
"Nur wenn uns nichts anderes übrig bleibt", sagte der Dekan. "Wir zeigen den Studenten, wo die Bibliothek ist, plaudern ein wenig mit ihnen und promovieren die Überlebenden. Wenn sie auf Probleme stoßen, steht meine Tür in metaphorischer Hinsicht immer für sie offen."
"In metaphorischer Hinsicht?", wiederholte Ponder.
"Ja. In Wirklichkeit ist sie natürlich verschlossen."
"Erklär ihm, dass wir nichts tun, Stibbons", verlangte der Dozent für neue Runen. "Wir sind Akademiker.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Master Richard Scallion is the youngest person ever to be dimissed from the Postal Service for writing "Oh Yes They Do" on a package for the Duke of Eorle bearing the inscription "PRICELESS ENGRAVINGS - DO NOT BEND”
― Terry Pratchett, The Ankh-Morpork Archives, Volume I

“Ecoute, dit-il à son imagination, si tu continues dans cette voie, je ne t'emmène plus avec moi.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Moite revint dans le bâtiment, gravit quatre à quatre l'escalier vers son bureau, ferma la porte, se fourra son mouchoir dans la bouche et pleurnicha doucement quelques secondes jusqu'à ce qu'il se sente mieux.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. Men made dogs, they took wolves and gave them human things - unnecessary intelligence, names, a desire to belong, and a twitching inferiority complex. All dogs dream wolf dreams, and know they're dreaming of biting their Maker. Every dog knows, deep in his heart, that he is a Bad Dog...”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms