Terry Pratchett Quotes

People’s whole lives do pass in front of their eyes before they die. The process is called “living.”[Also known as:]It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.

When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth.

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

The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do.

Stopping a battle is much harder that starting it. Starting it only requires you to shout “Attack!,” but when you want to stop it, everyone is busy.

It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism.

If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat. They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of 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.

DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death, JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.

Your own brains ought to have the decency to be on your side!

You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people any more, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just … is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbours.

You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world? It’s all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they’re really good at. It’s all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It’s all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad plowmen instead. It’s all the people with talents who never even find out. Maybe they are never even born in a time when it’s even possible to find out. It’s all the people who never get to know what it is that they can really be. It’s all the wasted chances.

You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was “but we’ve always done it this way.” A million dead people can’t have been wrong, can they?