Terry Pratchett Quotes

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

The evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you are going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.

The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.

Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened

Don't think of it as dying, just think of it as leaving early to avoid the rush.

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.

Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.

It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.

Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.

Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.

Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

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'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.