Terry Pratchett Quotes

756 Sourced Quotes

Not for the first time in the history of the universe, someone for whom communication normally came as effortlessly as a dream was stuck for inspiration when faced with a few lines on the back of a card.

Terry Pratchett
Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned.

Terry Pratchett
Happiness is not the natural state of mankind, and is never achieved from the outside in.

Terry Pratchett
It takes forty men with their feet on the ground to keep one man with his head in the air.

Terry Pratchett
I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts,

Terry Pratchett
Understanding is the first step towards control. We now understand probability.

Terry Pratchett
So let's not get frightened when the children read fantasy. It's the compost for a healthy mind. It stimulate s the inquisitive nodes, and there is some evidence that a rich internal fantasy life is as good and necessary for a child as healthy soil is for a plant, for much the same reasons.

Terry Pratchett
All was black, gloomy and awful. There was no light at the end of the tunnel - or if there was, it was an oncoming train.

Terry Pratchett
You've got a lot of time for abstract thought when you've got your hand stuck up a dead badger.

Terry Pratchett
History, contrary to popular theories, is kings and dates and battles.

Terry Pratchett
Nothing has to be true forever. Just for long enough, to tell you the truth.

Terry Pratchett
I read the 'Old Testament' all the way through when I was about 13 and was horrified. A few months afterwards I read 'The Origin Of Species', hallucinating very mildly because I was in bed with flu at the time. Despite that, or because of that, it all made perfect sense.

Terry Pratchett
The labyrinth of Ephebe is ancient and full of one hundred and one amazing things you can do with hidden springs, razor-sharp knives, and falling rocks.

Terry Pratchett
Life is just chemicals. A drop here, a drip there, everything's changed. A mere dribble of fermented juices and sudenlly you're going to live another few hours.

Terry Pratchett
There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That's what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed.

Terry Pratchett
Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we'd be melting the bronze already.

Terry Pratchett
A Duke couldn't have the arse hanging out of his trousers when meeting foreign diplomats. Actually even plain old Sam Vimes never had the arse hanging out of his trousers, either, but no one would have actually started a war if he had.

Terry Pratchett
The Explosion removed the windows, the door and most of the chimney. It was the sort of thing you expected in the Street of Alchemists. The neighbors preferred explosions, which were at least identifiable and soon over. They were better than the smells, which crept up upon you.

Terry Pratchett
Mort was hurt by this. It was one thing not to want to marry someone, but quite another to be told they didn't want to marry you.

Terry Pratchett
Knowing how bad you could be is a great encouragement to being good.

Terry Pratchett
The thing about secrets is that they are usually best kept by just one person. That was the special thing about secrets. Some people seemed to think that the best way to keep a secret was to tell as many people as possible; what could possibly go wrong for a secret when there were so many people defending it?

Terry Pratchett
There's no point in killing an opponent... There's no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure.

Terry Pratchett
You see the lighted windows and what you want to think is that there may be many interesting stories behind them, but what you know is that really there are just dull, dull souls, mere consumers of food, who think their instincts are emotions and their tiny lives of more account than a whisper of wind.

Terry Pratchett
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards because a refusal often offends, I read somewhere.

Terry Pratchett
You know I've never agreed with baths. Sittin' around in your own dirt like that.

Terry Pratchett
A world like that, which exists only because the gods enjoy a joke, must be a place where magic can survive. And sex too, of course.

Terry Pratchett
She was, in fact, quite a pleasant looking girl, even if her bosom had clearly been intended for a girl two feet taller; but she was not Her. The Egregious Professor of Grammar and Usage would have corrected this to "she was not she," which would have caused the Professor of Logic to spit out his drink.

Terry Pratchett
People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.

Terry Pratchett
Many feel they are called to the priesthood, but what they really hear is an inner voice saying, 'It's indoor work with no heavy lifting, do you want to be a ploughman like your father?'

Terry Pratchett
The universe clearly operates for the benefit of humanity. This can be readily seen from the convenient way the sun comes up in the morning, when people are ready to start the day.

Terry Pratchett