Terry Pratchett Quotes

756 Sourced Quotes

Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter's wheel. That's how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn't be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies.

Terry Pratchett
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.

Terry Pratchett
His movements could be called cat-like, except that he did not stop to spray urine up against things.

Terry Pratchett
Of course, Ankh-Morpork's citizens had always claimed that the river water was incredibly pure. Any water that had passed through so many kidneys, they reasoned, had to be very pure indeed.

Terry Pratchett
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.

Terry Pratchett
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.

Terry Pratchett
And what are you doing on it, I would like to know? Running away from home, yesno? If you were a boy I'd say are you going to seek your fortune?" "Can't girls seek their fortune?" "I think they're supposed to seek a boy with a fortune.

Terry Pratchett
Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races... very handy.

Terry Pratchett
Reality is not digital, an on-off state, but analog. Something gradual. In other words, reality is a quality that things possess in the same way that they possess, say, weight. Some people are more real than others, for example. It has been estimated that there are only about five hundred real people on any given planet, which is why they keep unexpectedly running into one another all the time.

Terry Pratchett
Inside every lump of coal there's a diamond waiting to get out.

Terry Pratchett
What're quantum mechanics?" "I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose.

Terry Pratchett
It was quite impossible to describe. Here is what it looked like. It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and it felt Paisley. It smelled like the total eclipse of the moon.

Terry Pratchett
Jeremy tried to be an interesting person. The trouble was that he was the kind of person who, having decided to be an interesting person, would first of all try to find a book called How to Be An Interesting Person and then see whether there were any courses available.

Terry Pratchett
It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane.

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

Terry Pratchett
Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.

Terry Pratchett
Maurice watched them argue again. Humans, eh? Think they're lords of creation. Not like us cats. We know we are. Ever see a cat feed a human? Case proven.

Terry Pratchett
Keep 'em busy. That was one of the three rules of being chief that old Grimm had passed on to him. Act confidently, never say 'I don't know,' and when all else fails, keep 'em busy.

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

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

Terry Pratchett
The dwarfs can turn lead into gold... It reached the pointy ears of the dwarfs. -Can we? -Damned if I know. I can't. -Yeah, but if you could, you wouldn't say. I wouldn't say, if I could. -Can you? -No! -Ah-ha!

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