Terry Pratchett Quotes

756 Sourced Quotes

Remember - that which does not kill us can only make us stronger. And that which does kill us leaves us dead!

Terry Pratchett
No one knew where you were before you were born, but when you were born, it wasn't long before you found you'd arrived with your return ticket already punched.

Terry Pratchett
The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other.

Terry Pratchett
When it's time to stop living, I will certainly make Death my number one choice!

Terry Pratchett
Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

Terry Pratchett
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.

Terry Pratchett
The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and a burden to the soul. They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the risk to innocent people.

Terry Pratchett
There are, almost by definition, an unlimited number of Hells - potentially at least a personal one for every living sapient being.

Terry Pratchett
People are content to wait a long time for salvation, but prefer dinner to turn up inside an hour.

Terry Pratchett
One of the recurring philosophical questions is: 'Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?' Which says something about the nature of philosophers, because there is always someone in a forest. It may only be a badger, wondering what that cracking noise was, or a squirrel a bit puzzled by all the scenery going upwards, but someone.

Terry Pratchett
Classically, very few people have considered that cleanliness is next to godliness. A rank loincloth and hair in an advanced state of matted entanglement have generally been the badges of office of prophets whose injunction to disdain earthly things starts with soap.

Terry Pratchett
You get all sorts of people in the library, and the librarian gets it all...

Terry Pratchett
The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain -- the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn.

Terry Pratchett
Correct observation followed by meticulous deduction and the precise visualization of goals is vital to the success of any enterprise.

Terry Pratchett
The sign, which says: "Do not, under any circumstances, open this door!" - Of course, I've read it. Why do you think I want it opened?.. To see why they wanted it shut, of course. This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilization. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking.

Terry Pratchett
I can't pretend to understand probability math. But if the universe is so ordered, so — immutable — that the future can be told by a handful of numbers, then why need we go on living?

Terry Pratchett
There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise.

Terry Pratchett
On book proofs:
They're a sort of trial run for the books so's we can check that all the spelling mistakes have been left in.

Terry Pratchett
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.

Terry Pratchett
Priests were metal-reinforced overshoes. They saved your soles. This is an Assassin joke.

Terry Pratchett
'Well … welcome. My house is your house', his brow suddenly furrowed and he looked worried, 'although only in a metaphorical sense, you understand, because I would not, much as I always admired your straightforward approach, and indeed your forthright stance, actually give you my house, it being the only house I have, and therefore the term is being extended in an, as it were, gratuitous fashion —'

Terry Pratchett
He'sh mad?' 'Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money.' 'Ah, then he can't be mad. I've been around; if a man hash lotsh of money he'sh just ecshentric.

Terry Pratchett
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.

Terry Pratchett
People were people, even if they had four legs and had called themselves names like Dangerous Beans, which is the kind of name you gave yourself if you learned to read before you understood what all the words actually meant.

Terry Pratchett
On the fifth day the Governor of the town called all the tribal chieftains to an audience in the market square, to hear their grievances. He didn't always do anything about them, but at least they got heard, and he nodded a lot, and everyone felt better about it at least until they got home. This is politics.

Terry Pratchett
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?

Terry Pratchett
Verence would rather cut his own leg off than put a witch in prison, since it'd save trouble in the long run and probably be less painful.

Terry Pratchett
The most prudent thing any intelligent animal can do, if it would prefer its descendents 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 patronised by zoologists, is to make bloody certain humans don't find out about it.

Terry Pratchett
The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

Terry Pratchett
When people say "clearly" something that means there's a huge crack in their argument and they know things aren't clear at all.

Terry Pratchett