Terry Pratchett Quotes

“He’s muffed it,” said Simony. “he could have done *anything* with them. And he just told them the facts. You can’t inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol.”
– (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

Sergeant Comely was working on the general assumption that where you got lots of people gathered together, something illegal was bound to happensooner or later.
– (Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead)

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
– (Terry Pratchett, Diggers)

One day I’ll be dead and THEN you’ll all be sorry.
– (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

It’s not enough to be able to pick up a sword. You have to know which end to poke into the enemy.
– (Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)

“I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good.  It’s never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting “Forward, brave comrades!” you’ll see he’s the one behind the bloody big rock and the one wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!”
– Rincewind gives a speech on politics.
(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times)

Cuddy had only been a guard for a few days, but already he had absorbed one important and basic fact: it is almost impossible for anyone to be in a street without breaking the law.
– (Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

Sometimes it’s better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
– (Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms)

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?”
– (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)

He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behaviour for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overhelming majority of citizens. [footnote: The overhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit]
– (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery)

There were a few seconds of total silence as everyone waited to see what would happen next. And then Nijel uttered the battle cry that Rincewind would never quite forget to the end of his life.  “Erm,” he said, “excuse me…”
– (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery)

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, Witches Abroad)

The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.
– (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)

The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.
– (Terry Pratchett, Eric)

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