Pratchett Discordian-esque quotes

[Cain]

Lets put em here:

It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.

'We don't have gods where I come from,' said Twoflower.
'You do, you know,' said the Lady. 'Everyone has gods. You just don't think they're gods.'

The only reason for walking into the jaws of Death is so's you can steal his gold teeth.

Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.

It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.

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.

"You won't get away with this," said Cutwell. He thought for a bit and added, "Well, you will probably get away with it, but you'll feel bad about it on your deathbed and you'll wish — " He stopped talking.

'And what would humans be without love?'
RARE, said Death.

The Hashishim, who derived their name from the vast quantities of hashish they consumed, were unique among vicious killers in being both deadly and, at the same time, inclined to giggle, groove to interesting patterns of light and shade on their terrible knife blades and, in extreme cases, fall over.

They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.

Take it from me, there's nothing more terrible than someone out to do the world a favour.

Wizards don't like philosophy very much. As far as they are concerned, one hand clapping makes a sound like 'cl'.

No gods anywhere play chess. They prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; A key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.

Demons were like genies or philosophy professors — if you didn't word things exactly right, they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate and completely misleading answers.

Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.

Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them neatly away so that they don't upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the "Marie Celeste", and the chuck keys for electric drills.

It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable.

Just erotic, nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.

Demons have existed on the Discworld for at least as long as the gods, who in many ways they closely resemble. The difference is basically the same as that between terrorists and freedom fighters.

Astfgl had achieved in Hell a particularly high brand of boredom which is like the boredom you get which is a) costing you money, and b) is taking place while you should be having a nice time.

Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn't have been bothering you with in the first place.

No naked little men sat on the summit dispensing wisdom, because the first thing the truly wise man works out is that sitting around on mountaintops gives you not only haemorrhoids but frostbitten haemorrhoids.

All witches are very conscious of stories. They can feel stories, in the same way that a bather in a little pool can feel the unexpected trout. Knowing how stories work is almost all the battle. For example, when an obvious innocent sits down with three experienced card sharpers and says 'How do you play this game, then?', someone is about to be shaken down until their teeth fall out.

Granny Weatherwax didn't like maps. She felt instinctively that they sold the landscape short.

"Listen, happy endings is fine if they turn out happy," said Granny, glaring at the sky. "But you can't make 'em for other people. Like the only way you could make a happy marriage is by cuttin' their heads off as soon as they say "I do", yes? You can't make happiness..."

The memory stole over him: a desert is what you think it is. And now, you can think clearly...
There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That's what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed.
What have I always believed?
That, on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, in the end, more or less, turn out all right.
You couldn't get that on a banner. But the desert looked better already.
Fri'it set out.

It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong... It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.
Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by certain remote tribesmen who occasionally get raided by the authorities and have the contents of their plastic greenhouses very seriously inspected.

Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.

And it all meant this: that 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.

'Did not the Great God declare, through the Prophet Abbys, that there is no greater and more honourable sacrifice than one's own life for the God?'
'Indeed he did,' said Fri'it. He couldn't help recalling that Abbys had been a bishop in the Citadel for fifty years before the Great God has chosen him. Screaming enemies had never come at him with a sword. He'd never looked in to the eyes of someone who wished him dead.

'I know about sureness,' said Didactylos. Now the light irascible tone had drained out of his voice. 'I remember before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. This was before the borders were closed, when you still let people travel. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?'
'It has to be done,' Brutha mumbled. 'So the soul can be shriven and — '
'Don't know about soul. Never been that kind of a philosopher,' said Didactylos. 'All I know is, it was a horrible sight.'
'The state of the body is not — '
'Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit,' said the philosopher. 'I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad that it wasn't them that they were throwing just as hard as they could.'

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous school — the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans — and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink. Mine's double, if you are buying. Thank you. And a packet of nuts. Her left bosom is nearly uncovered, eh? Two more packets, then!'

"That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does A Falling Tree in the Forest Make A Sound if There's No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of 'em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles."

"Chain letters," said the Tyrant. "The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain — the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn."

"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis. "So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water."

'But all them things exist,' said Nanny Ogg.
'That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.'

Nanny Ogg had a pragmatic attitude to the truth; she told it if it was convenient and she couldn't be bothered to make up something more interesting.

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.

† Cool, but not necessarily up to date

Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

There is a curse. They say: may you live in interesting times.

'But there are causes worth dying for,' said Butterfly.
'No, there aren't! Because you've only got one life but you can pick up another five causes on any street corner!'
'Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?'
Rincewind took a deep breath.
'Continuously!'

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 spill 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.

His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few people.

And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.

I Suggest You Take Me And Smash Me And Grind The Bits Into Fragments And Pound The Fragments Into Powder And Mill Them Again To The Finest Dust There Can Be, And I Believe You Will Not Find A Single Atom Of Life-'
'True! Let's do it!'
'However, In Order To Test This Fully, One Of You Must Volunteer To Undergo The Same Process.'
There was silence.
'That's not fair,' said a priest, after a while. 'All anyone has to do is bake up your dust again and you'll be alive...'
There was more silence.

'You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves?'
'Seems to be a major human activity, yes.'
Dorfl rumbled as he thought about this. 'Yes,' he said eventually. 'I Can See Why. Freedom Is Like Having The Top Of Your Head Opened Up.'
'I'll have to take your word for that, Constable.'

'No it's not! said Constable Visit. 'Atheism is a denial of a god.'
'Therefore It Is A Religious Position,' said Dorfl. 'Indeed, A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheist Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny.'

"Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk ..."

You never ever volunteered. Not even if a sergant stood there and said, "We need someone to drink alcohol, bottles of, and make love, passionate, to women, for the use of." There was always a snag. If a choir of angels asked for volunteers for Paradise to step forward, Nobby knew enough to take one smart pace to the rear.

What a mess the world was in, reflected Vimes. Constable Visit had told him that the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that?

'And there's the sign, Ridcully,' said the Dean. You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says "Do not, under any circumstances, open this door"?'
'Of course I've read it,' said Ridcully. 'Why d'yer think I want it opened?'
'Er...why?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'To see why they wanted it shut, of course.'†

† This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilisation. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking.

[Cain]

'You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'
It's a sword. said the Hogfather. They're not meant to be safe.
'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.
It's educational.
'What if she cuts herself?'
That will be an important lesson.

So mistletoe, in fact, symbolises mistletoe?'
'Exactly, Archchancellor,' said the Senior Wrangler, who was now just hanging on.
'Funny thing, that,' said Ridcully, in the same thoughtful tone of voice. 'That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?'
'It could be both,' said the Senior Wrangler desperately.
'And that comment,' said Ridcully, 'is either very perceptive, or very trite.'
'It might be bo — '
'Don't push it, Senior Wrangler.'

Many people are aware of the weak and strong anthropic principle. The weak one says, basically, that is was jolly amazing of the universe to be constructed in such a way that humans could evolve to a point where they make a living in, for example, universities, while the strong one says that, on the contrary, the whole point of the universe was that humans should not only work in universities but also write for huge sums books with words like 'Cosmic' and 'Chaos' in the titles.†

† And they are correct. The universe clearly operates for the benefit of humanity. This can be readily seen from the way the sun comes up in the morning, when people are ready to start the day.

"All right," said Susan, "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable."
NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN.  TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers?"
YES.  AS PRACTICE.  YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE TE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES.  JUSTICE.  DUTY.  MERCY.  THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
REALLY?  THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THOUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY.  AND YET YOU ACT, LIKE THERE IS SOME SORT OF 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.

It's amazing how good governments are, given their track record in almost every other field, at hushing up things like alien encounters. One reason may be that the aliens themselves are too embarrassed to talk about it. It's not known why most of the space-going races of the universe want to undertake rummaging in Earthling underwear as a prelude to formal contact. But representatives of several hundred races have taken to hanging out, unsuspected by one another, in rural corners of the planet and, as a result of this, keep on abducting other would-be abductees. Some have been in fact abducted while waiting to carry out an abduction on a couple of other aliens trying to abduct the aliens who were, as a result of misunderstood instructions, trying to form cattle into circles and mutilate crops. The planet Earth is now banned to an alien races until they can compare notes and find out how many, if any, real humans they have actually got. It is gloomily suspected that there is only one who is big, hairy and has very large feet. The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

So Hex here has caught daftness off the Bursar,' said Ridcully. 'Simple. Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.'

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

Gentlemen, no fighting please. This is, after all, a council of war.

Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we'd be melting the bronze already.

D'reg wasn't their name for themselves, although they tended to adopt it now out of pride. The word meant enemy. Everyone's.

It is always useful to have an enemy who is prepared to die for his country, this means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true'.

You couldn't stop Tradition. You could only add to it.

Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn't always beat actual thought.

'Haven't you noticed that by running away you end up in more trouble?'
'Yes, but you see, you can run away from that, too,' said Rincewind. 'That's the beauty of the system. Dead is only for once, but running away is for ever.'
'Ah, but it is said that a coward dies a thousand deaths, while a hero dies only one.'
'Yes, but it's the important one.'

"It's not as simple as that. It's not a black-and-white issue. There are so many shades of gray."
"There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."
"It's a lot more complicated than that-"
"No. It ain't. When people say things are more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts."
"Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes-"
"But they starts with thinking about people as things..."

It was funny how people were people everywhere you went, even if the people concerned weren't the people the people who made up the phrase 'people are people everywhere' had traditionally thought of as people. And even if you weren't virtuous, as you had been brought up to understand the term, you did like to see virtue in other people, provided it didn't cost you anything.

He was aware that a wise man should always respect the folkways of others, to use Carrot's happy phrase, but Vimes often had difficulty with this idea. For one thing, there were people in the world whose folkways consisted of gutting other people like clams and this was not a procedure that commanded, in Vimes, any kind of respect at all.

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?

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret.

The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It's also wrong. There's a fifth element, and generally it's called Surprise.

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! 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 carefully knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass), or who had no glass at all, because they were at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye.

Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.

Your Brain On Drugs is a terrible sight, but Mr. Tulip was living proof of the fact that so was Your Brain on a cocktail of horse liniment, sherbet and powdered water-retention pills.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

Susan stopped. Of course someone would be that stupid. 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.

Rule One: Never act incautiously around small, wrinkly, bald, smiling men.

I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible.

Ninety per cent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.

Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes.

"You'd like Freedom, Truth and Justice, wouldn't you, comrade sergeant?" said Reg encouragingly.
"I'd like a hardboiled egg," said Vimes, shaking the match out. "What's this all about, Reg?"
"The People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road!" said Reg proudly. "We are forming a government!"
"Oh, good," said Vimes. "Another one. Just what we need. Now, does any one of you know where my damn barricades have gone?"

They didn't like the Unmentionables. Like petty criminals everywhere, the watchmen prided themselves that there were some depths to which they would not sink. There had to be some things below you, even if it was only mudworms.

Everyone was guilty of something. Vimes knew that. Every copper knew it. That was how you maintained your authority. Everyone, talking to a copper, was secretly afraid you could see their guilty secret written on their forehead. You couldn't, of course. But neither were you supposed to drag someone off the street and smash their fingers with a hammer until they told you what it was.

'Yeah, all right, but everyone knows they torture people,' mumbled Sam.
'Do they?' said Vimes. 'Then why doesn't anyone do anything about it?'
''cos they torture people.'

The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about "a handsome prince"... was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called handsome? As for "a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long"... well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories don't want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told...

She unfolded the other piece of paper. It was a pamphlet. It was headed "From the Mothers of Borogravia!!" The mothers of Borogravia were very definite about wanting to send their sons off to war Against the Zlobenian Aggressor!! and used a great many exclamation points to say so. And this was odd, because the mothers in the town had not seemed keen on the idea of their sons going off to war, and positively tried to drag them back. Several copies of the pamphlet seemed to have reached every home, even so. It was very patriotic. That is, it talked about killing foreigners.

The pencil was hovering. Around it, the world turned. It wrote things down, and then they got everywhere. The pen might not be mightier than the sword, but maybe the printing press was heavier than the siege weapon. Just a few words can change everything...

People didn't respect Miss Level. They liked her, in an unthinking sort of way, and that was it. Mistress Weatherwax was right, and Tiffany wished she wasn't.
"Why did you and Miss Tick send me to her, then?" she said.
"Because she likes people," said the witch, striding ahead. "She cares about 'em. Even the stupid, mean drooling ones, the mothers with the runny babies and no sense, the feckless and silly fools who treat her like some kind of a servant. Now that's what I call magic — seein' all that, dealin' with all that, and still goin' on."

'Oh, all right. Of course I accept as a natural born criminal, habitual liar, fraudster and totally untrustworthy perverted genius'.
'Capital! Welcome to government service!' said Lord Vetinari, 'I pride myself on being able to pick the right man.'

I commend my soul to any god that can find it.

What sort of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.

Vimes had never got on with any game much more complex than darts. Chess in particular had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks round, the whole board could've been a republic in a dozen moves.

With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D and you still have the frog you started with.

[B_M_W]

I remember a bunch of these.

[Richter]

You just covered all of my favorites.
Even Death giving the little girl a sword in "Hoggfather"

DAMN YUO CAIN!

[Cain]

[LMNO]

While we're on the subject, I haven't started on the Witches storyline.  I know I'll probably pick them up anyway, but does anyone have thoughts on them?

[Cain]

Pretty good.  Granny Weatherwax knows where we're coming from. 

[Jasper]

Granny Weatherwax is basically MC Hammer in a frail old woman's body.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Granny Weatherwax is basically MC Hammer in a frail old woman's body.

Yer grandpa and I used to dance like this all the time... then we'd get down on the couch and...
       /

[Epimetheus]

  Good list.

I read the Color of Magic and I got The Light Fantastic, but haven't read it yet. School business and all that getting in the way.

[Jasper]

Damn, I went through a faze in high school of reading everything of his.  I had my nose in books for an entire semester.

[Nast]

Pretty good.  Granny Weatherwax knows where we're coming from. 

Granny is my idol.
<3

[LMNO]

There's a line from "Men at Arms", but I don't have it in front of me.  It's part of the Gaspode subplot, and goes something like, "Of course humans have to focus on one thing at a time.  If they could see everything all at once, nothing would ever get done."

Anyone have the book nearby to get it right?

[TheLastLump]

Greeeaat.... Now I've got like thirty more books I NEED to read before I die. I'm not made out of money, dammit ^.^

Well, it should be fun trying to track down every one...

[Jasper]

It shouldn't be hard to get at least a few at the library, to tide you over until you can befriend someone who owns the whole series.