Matthew > Matthew's Quotes

Showing 1-30 of 59
« previous 1
sort by

  • #1
    Terry Pratchett
    “Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.”
    Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times: The Play

  • #2
    Terry Pratchett
    “Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.”
    Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

  • #3
    Terry Pratchett
    “All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

    REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

    "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

    YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

    "So we can believe the big ones?"

    YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

    "They're not the same at all!"

    YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

    "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

    MY POINT EXACTLY.”
    Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

  • #4
    Terry Pratchett
    “Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.”
    Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

  • #5
    Terry Pratchett
    “All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!

    I have a duty
    !”
    Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

  • #6
    Terry Pratchett
    “If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
    Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

  • #7
    Terry Pratchett
    “Thinking. This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you.”
    Terry Pratchett, Nation

  • #8
    Terry Pratchett
    “I notice you didn't laugh, Mr. Black!'

    'No, Your Majesty. We are forbidden to laugh at the things kings say, sire, because otherwise we would be at it all day.”
    Terry Pratchett, Nation
    tags: humor

  • #9
    Terry Pratchett
    “Religion is not an exact science. Sometimes, of course, neither is science.”
    Terry Pratchett, Nation

  • #10
    Terry Pratchett
    “And perhaps at the other end of the world there is a place where the screaming can’t be heard, and I may find it in my heart to grant God absolution!”
    Terry Pratchett, Nation

  • #11
    Terry Pratchett
    “It Takes A Lifetime To Learn How To Die”
    Terry Pratchett, Nation

  • #12
    Terry Pratchett
    “You didn’t want to be a warrior?”
    “Never. It takes a woman nine months to make a new human. Why waste her effort?”
    Terry Pratchett, Nation

  • #13
    Terry Pratchett
    “They didn’t know why these things were funny. Sometimes you laugh because you’ve got no more room for crying. Sometimes you laugh because table manners on a beach are funny. And sometimes you laugh because you’re alive, when you really shouldn’t be.”
    Terry Pratchett, Nation

  • #14
    Terry Pratchett
    “If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.”
    Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

  • #15
    Terry Pratchett
    “I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
    Death thought about it.
    CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.”
    Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

  • #16
    Terry Pratchett
    “Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”
    Terry Pratchett

  • #17
    Terry Pratchett
    “In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
    Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

  • #18
    Terry Pratchett
    “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”
    Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

  • #19
    Terry Pratchett
    “It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.”
    Terry Pratchett

  • #20
    Terry Pratchett
    “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 [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant 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.”
    Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

  • #21
    Terry Pratchett
    “Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”
    Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

  • #22
    Terry Pratchett
    “Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
    Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
    Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
    Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
    Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
    Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
    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.
    No one ever said elves are nice.
    Elves are bad.”
    Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

  • #23
    Terry Pratchett
    “There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
    The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?
    And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye. ”
    Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation
    tags: life

  • #24
    Terry Pratchett
    “Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.
    But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”
    Terry Pratchett, Mort

  • #25
    Terry Pratchett
    “This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.”
    Terry Pratchett

  • #26
    Terry Pratchett
    “There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do.”
    Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

  • #27
    Terry Pratchett
    “Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been fate. People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events -- the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there -- that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.”
    Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

  • #28
    Terry Pratchett
    “I do note with interest that old women in my books become young women on the covers... this is discrimination against the chronologically gifted.”
    Terry Pratchett

  • #29
    Terry Pratchett
    “Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.”
    Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

  • #30
    Terry Pratchett
    “Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.”
    Terry Pratchett, Thud!



Rss
« previous 1