Terry Pratchett Quotes

756 Sourced Quotes

I express preference for a chronological sequence of events which precludes a violence.

Terry Pratchett
The man gave a shrug which indicated that, although the world did indeed have many problems, this was one of them that was not his.

Terry Pratchett
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

Terry Pratchett
Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot him and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?

Terry Pratchett
It must be hard for humans, forever floundering through inconvenient geography. Humans are always lost. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them.

Terry Pratchett
I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf and I'm mean and turf, And me an' my friends can walk towards you with our hats on backwards in a menacing way, Yo!

Terry Pratchett
Granny knew all about bad fortune-telling. It was harder than the real thing. You needed a good imagination.

Terry Pratchett
Picturesque meant - he decided after careful observation of the scenerey that inspired Twoflower to use the word - that the landscape was horribly precipitous. Quaint, when used to describe the occasional village through which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown. Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, mean 'idiot'.

Terry Pratchett
In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the
cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat
could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.

Terry Pratchett
Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point MY POINT EXACTLY.

Terry Pratchett
I had a deprived childhood, you see. I had lots of other kids to play with and my parents bought me outdoor toys and refused to ill-treat me, so it never occurred to me to seek solitary consolation with a good book.

Terry Pratchett
The days followed one another patiently. Right back at the beginning of the multiverse they had tried all passing at the same time, and it hadn't worked.

Terry Pratchett
Theories, diverse as they are, have two things in common. They explain the observed facts, and they are completely and utterly wrong.

Terry Pratchett
We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

Terry Pratchett
History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it

Terry Pratchett
Plot exposition that can be gently wound out by the authorial voice and internal monologue of a character in the length of a page has to be delivered in a matter of seconds on the stage.

Terry Pratchett
London was not designed for cars. Come to that, it wasn't designed for people. It just sort of happened. This created problems, and the solutions that were implemented became the next problems, five or ten or a hundred years down the line.

Terry Pratchett
And we don't often get any wading birds in the River Ankh, mainly because the pollution would eat their legs away and anyway, it's easier for them to walk on the surface.

Terry Pratchett
This was the definition of eternity; it was the space of time devised by the Great God Om to ensure that everyone got the punishment that was due to them.

Terry Pratchett
The singers all loathe the sight of one another, the chorus despises the singers, they both hate the orchestra, and everyone fears the conductor; the staff on one prompt side won't talk to the staff on the opposite prompt side, the dancers are all crazed from hunger in any case...

Terry Pratchett
The thing with crowns is, it isn't the putting them on that's the problem, it's the taking them off.

Terry Pratchett
SCIENCE: a way of finding things out and then making them work. Science explains what is happening around us the whole time. So does RELIGION, but science is better because it comes up with more understandable excuses when it's wrong.

Terry Pratchett
People are bound to get excited when they see a ten-million-ton starship trying to fly down the street.

Terry Pratchett
I thought jet planes were just trucks with more wings and less wheels.

Terry Pratchett
Aliens don't get stuck in air ducts. It's practically a well-known fact.

Terry Pratchett
Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving

Terry Pratchett
Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave, and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat.

Terry Pratchett
History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.

Terry Pratchett
The senior wizard in a world of magic had the same prospects of long-term employment as a pogo stick tester in a minefield.

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