"There's a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork. And it's wrong. All roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork, but sometimes people just walk along them the wrong way."
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Terry Pratchett quotes (page 1 of 72)
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"The worst thing you can do is nothing."
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"My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage at all pedestrians while ringing their bell loudly, the concept of avoiding people being foreign to them."
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"There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this."
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"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."
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"Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four."
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"Tourist, Rincewind decided, meant ‘idiot."
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"...and the funny thing was that people who weren't entirely certain they were right always argued much louder than other people, as if the main person they were trying to convince were themselves."
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"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
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"I have, before now, waited for a pen to perform a macro."
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"You never knew about people, like you never knew how deep a pond was because all you saw was the top."
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"Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it." "No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short."
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"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."
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"Picturesque meant - he decided after careful observation of the scenerey that inspired Twoflower to use the word - that the landscape was horribly precipitous. Quaint, when used to describe the occasional village through which they passed, meant fever-ridden and tumbledown. Twoflower was a tourist, the first ever seen on the discworld. Tourist, Rincewind had decided, mean 'idiot'."
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"I would like permission to fetch a note from my mother, sir' Ridcully sighed. 'Rincewind, you once informed me, to my everlasting puzzlement, that you never knew your mother because she ran away before you were born. Distinctly remember writing it down in my diary. Would you like another try?' 'Permission to go and find my mother?'"
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"William: "I'm sure we can all pull together, sir." Vetinari: "Oh, I do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions."
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""Multiple exclamation marks," he went on, shaking his head, "are a sure sign of a diseased mind.""
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"Gnomes live ten times faster than humans. They're harder to see than a high-speed mouse. That's one reason why most humans hardly ever see them. The other is that humans are very good at not seeing things they know aren't there. And, since sensible humans know that there are no such things as people four inches high, a gnome who doesn't want to be seen probably won't be seen... Wings."
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"Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended."
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"He moved in a way that suggested he was attempting the world speed record for the nonchalant walk."
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