Terry Pratchett Quotes

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

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.

Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.

Brave men make good soldiers, but cowards make better strategists.

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.

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

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

He was the sort of person who stood on mountaintops during thunderstorms in wet copper armour shouting "All the Gods are bastards."

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

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

As for The Mapp... I suspect it'll never get a US publication. It seemed to frighten US publishers. They don't seem to understand it. 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?
I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true.

Life doesn't happen in chapters— at least, not regular ones. Nor do movies. Homer didn't write in chapters. I can see what their purpose is in children's books ("I'll read to the end of the chapter, and then you must go to sleep") but I'm blessed if I know what function they serve in books for adults. (on the lack of chapters in DiscWorld books)

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

It's not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren't doing.

Imagination, not intelligence, made us human.

Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.

Wikipedia, eh? Must be accurate then!

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.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along.

Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds.

I don't like the place at all. It's all wrong. An imposition on the Landscape. I reckon that Stonehenge was build by the contemporary equivalent of Microsoft, whereas Avebury was definitely an Apple circle.

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

Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

Sooner or later we're all someone's dog.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

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

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

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

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

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

'They can ta'k our lives but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now there's a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker...

Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.

Oh, come on. Revelation was a mushroom dream that belonged in the Apocrypha. The New Testament is basically about what happened when God got religion.

What your soldier wants-- really, really wants -- is no-one shooting back at him.

You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.

You can’t make people happy by law. 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’.

I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It's generally a better bet. There's more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say "it was god's will" when granny dies, but they get angry when they lose a cow.

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...

I staggered into a Manchester bar late one night on a tour and the waitress said "You look as if you need a Screaming Orgasm". At the time this was the last thing on my mind...

I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did.

I must confess the the activities of the UK governments for the past couple of years have been watched with frank admiration and amazement by Lord Vetinari. Outright theft as a policy had never occurred to him.

Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb -- they're often students, for heaven's sake.

Too many people want to have written.

Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living.

DiscWorld is based on a slew of old myths, which reach their most 'refined' form in Hindu mythology, which in turn of course derived from the original Star Trek episode 'Planet of Wobbly Rocks where the Security Guard Got Shot'.

They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.
It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on.

You mean nothing becomes everything? Why, yes, sir. Er... in a way, it has to, sir. It could have been anything at all, sir. Even a stray thought. Absolute nothing is very unstable. It's so desperate to be something.

Magicians and scientists are, on the face of it, poles apart. Certainly, a group of people who often dress strangely, live in a world of their own, speak a specialized language and frequently make statements that appear to be in flagrant breach of common sense have nothing in common with a group of people who often dress strangely, speak a specialized language, live in ... er ...

1. All fungi are edible.
2. Some fungi are not edible more than once.

Look, how about this: let's pretend we had the row and I've won, see. It saves a lot of effort... Now, are we going? (Isabella using some linguistic magic in Terry Pratchett's Mort :p)

Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know that in a universe so full of wonders they have managed to invent boredom? Quite astonishing...(Death in The Hogfather)

You need to believe in things that aren't true, how else can they become? (Death in The Hogfather)

Humans need fantasy to be human, to be the place where the fallen angel meets the rising ape. (Death in The Hogfather)