Terry Pratchett quotes

In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)

 

In the Beginning It was a nice day.

(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

 

If the Creator had said, "Let there be light" in Ankh-Morpork, he'd have gotten no further because of all the people saying "What colour?"

(Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

 

"It's more like a version of the Olympics, where the javalin-throwers try to spear as many marathon-runners as they can, while the steeplechasers are trying to steal their javalins to turn each hurdle into a miniature pole vault, and the marathon-runners' main aim in life is to drink the waterpump before the steeple-chasers get to it and drink it first."

Evolution is more like the Evolympics (Terry Pratchett,

Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen, The science of the Discworld III - Darwin's Watch)

 

Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck.

(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)

 

For Magrat, stepping into a man's bedroom was like an explorer stepping on to that part of the map marked Here Be Dragons.

(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)

 

"'Tis not right, a woman going into such places by herself." Granny nodded. She thoroughly approved of such sentiments so long as there was, of course, no suggestion that they applied to her.

(Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)

 

The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)

 

"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad."(Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times).

 

They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.

(Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites)

 

.. universities are truly storehouses of knowledge: students arrive from school confident that they know nearly everything, and they leave years later certain that they know practically nothing. Where did the knowledge go in the meantime? Into the university, of course, where it is carefully dried and stored.

(Terry Pratchett, Ian Steward & Jack Cohen, The science of discworld)

 

"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"

(Terry Pratchett, Mort)

 

"What is this thing, anyway?" said the Dean, inspecting the implement in his hands. "It's called a shovel," said the Senior Wrangler. "I've seen the gardeners use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical."

(Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man)

 

The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics. But this was only a formal statement of the theory which absolutely everyone, with only some minor details of a "Fill in name here" nature, secretly believes to be true.

(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

 

Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.

(Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)

 

There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.

(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

 

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).

(Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

 

The Kappamaki, a whaling research ship, was currently researching the question: How many whales can you catch in one week?

(Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

 

No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

(Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man)

 

The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.

(Terry Pratchett, Mort)

 

Rincewind had always been happy to think of himself as a racist. The One Hundred Meters, the Mile, the Marathon -- he'd run them all --.

(Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent)

 

The question seldom addressed is where Medusa had snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting the top of the deodorant bottle.

(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

 

"It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it," said War testily, "the One Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse."

The Four Horsemen of the Apocralypse encounter unexpected difficulties (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery)

 

People came to Ankh-Morpork to seek their fortune. Unfortunately, other people sought it too.

(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

 

The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.

(Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)