Terry Pratchett World Quotations

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

The world is a globe — the farther you sail, the closer to home you are.

If you put butter and salt on it, it tastes like salty butter.

A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.

Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.

Right!" "Right!" "You can get there!" "I can get there!" "You're a natural at counting to two!" "I'm a nat'ral at counting to two!" "If you can count to two, you can count to anything!" "If I can count to two, I can count to anything!" "And then the world is your mollusc!" "My mollusc! What's a mollusc?

Did I do anything last night that suggested I was sane?

Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.

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

No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away...

Sometimes I feel that the world is made up of sensible people who know the plot and bloody idiots who don't.

Omens are everywhere in this world you just have to find the one that fits.

Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.

Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.

And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.

He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.

Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.

Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time.

It's a god-eat-god world.

There are no inconsistencies in the Discworld books; ocassionally, however, there are alternate pasts.

In the world I live in, 'not worse' is nearly as good as 'better'.

Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease.

What can the harvest hope for...

Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving

Ritual and ceremony in their due times kept the world under the sky and the stars in their courses. It was astonishing what ritual and ceremony could do.

I am death, not taxes. I turn up only once.

Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out.

Given enough coffee I could rule the world

We've got a lot of experience of not having any experience

Divide by cucumber error. Please reinstall universe and reboot.

There were two ways of looking at the world, but only one when you are starving.

I imagine that fish have no word for water.

Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.

THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.

...no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away... The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.

All he knew was that you couldn't hope to try for the big stuff, like world peace and happiness, but you might just about be able to achieve some tiny deed that'd make the world, in a small way, a better place. Like shooting someone.

[Y]ou weren't born with a talent for witchcraft: it didn't come easily; you worked hard at it because you wanted it. You forced the world to give it to you, no matter the price, and the price is and always will be high... People say you don't find witchcraft; witchcraft finds you. But you've found it, even if at the time you didn't know what it was you were finding, and you grabbed it by its scrawny neck and made it work for you.

If you were going to be successful in the world of crime, you needed a reputation for honesty.

You can think and you can fight, but the world's always movin', and if you wanna stay ahead you gotta dance.

They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted it or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.

The theater troubled her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn’t belong to her, one that wasn’t in her control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn’t belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn’t know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better.

Despite rumor, Death isn't cruel--merely terribly, terribly good at his job.

Find the story, Granny Weatherwax always said. She believed that the world was full of story shapes. If you let them, they controlled you. But if you studied them, if you found out about them... you could use them, you could change them.

Ye ken, we've been robbin' and running aroound on all kinds o' worlds for a lang time, and I'll tell ye this: The universe is a lot more comp-li-cated than it looks from the ooutside.

The jurisdiction of a good man extends to the end of the world.

Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn't have places. There were rooms containing rooms which, if you entered them, turned out to contain the room you'd started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line.

The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.

Creators aren't gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It's men that make gods. This explains a lot.

And it came to pass that in time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One: "Psst!

No more words. We know them all, all the words that should not be said. But you have made my world more perfect.

WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM? "Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?" NO "Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact." THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN. ... "Really? Then what would have happened, pray?" A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.

And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.

Don't you *ever* let go?" "I haven't yet." "Why?" "I suppose... because in this world, after everyone panics, there's always got to be someone to tip the wee out of the shoe.

People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense.

They were small, brightly coloured, happy little creatures who secreted some of the nastiest toxins in the world, which is why the job of looking after the large vivarium where they happily passed their days was given to first-year students, on the basis that if they got things wrong there wouldn't be too much education wasted.

I commend my soul to any god that can find it.

And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.

It's beautiful," said Mort softly. "What is it?" THE SUN IS UNDER THE DISC, said Death. "Is it like this every night?" EVERY NIGHT, said Death. NATURE'S LIKE THAT. "Doesn't anyone know?" ME. YOU. THE GODS. GOOD, ISN'T IT? "Gosh!" Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms of the world. I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.

Death: "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT." Albert: "Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.

This time it had been magic. And it didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.

[The pamphlet] was very patriotic. That is, it talked about killing foreigners.

The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).

Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.

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

The more you think about it, the more amazing the everyday world of human beings becomes: most of it doesn't actually exist at all.

This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.

Words are the litmus paper of the mind.

He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk.

They'd smash up the world if they thought it would make a pretty noise.

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

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.

As we all know, the Discworld is a flat planet - like a geological pizza, but without the anchovies.

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.

The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got to the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities.

As large as worlds. As old as Time. As patient as a brick.

There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.

Its useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

Actors, said Granny, witheringly. As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more.

You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing.

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

There are thousands of good reasons why magic doesn't rule the world. They're called Witches and Wizards.

You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?