"Even priests were coming to spend some time in it (i.e., the library), because of the collection of religious books. There were one thousand, two hundred and eighty-three religious book in the collection now, each one—according to itself—the only book any man need ever read. It was sort of nice to see them all together. As Didactylos used to say, you had to laugh. (p. 354)"

""I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts," said Brutha. "That way, everyone's happy." (p. 350)"

"You can think up a better way of ruling the country. Priests shouldn't do it. They can't think about it properly. Nor can soldiers. (p. 350)"

"And no one, as they hauled on timbers in the teeth of the gale, as Urn applied everything he knew about levers, as they used their helmets as shovels to dig under the wreckage, asked who it was they were digging for, or what kind of uniform they'd been wearing. (p. 348)"

"Borvorius produced a flask from somewhere."

"Gods? Huh!"

"But you have thousands," said the Newt God. "You fight for thousands."

"There the gods of the Discworld live."

"But You Are The Chosen One."

"You know, I used to think I was stupid, and then I met philosophers. (p. 340)"

"You've come to wage war on Omnia. This would not be a good idea."

"You can die for your country or your people or your family, but for a god you should live fully and busily, every day of a long life. (p. 328)"

"We died for lies, for centuries we died for lies." He waved a hand towards the god. "Now we've got a truth to die for!"

"No. No smiting. No commandments unless you obey them too. (p. 325)"

"I think...you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time. (p. 325)"

"Don't put your faith in gods. But you can believe in turtles. (p. 323)"

"No tortoise had ever done this before. No tortoise in the whole universe. But no tortoise had ever been a god, and knew the unwritten motto of the Quisition: Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum."

"Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem. (p. 311)"

"Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent-protection. (p. 307)"

"Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be. (p. 305)"

"But he's on our side. Aren't you, Brutha?"

"Brutha?" said Urn. "You're alive?"

"Last night there seemed to be a chance. Anything was possible last night. That was the trouble with last nights. They were always followed by this mornings. (p. 303)"

"Although it was against the thread, Deacon Cusp had his head screwed on. (p. 300)"

"Yes, sergeant?"

"Mind like a steel ball, Om had said. Nothing got in or out. So all Vorbis could hear were the distant echoes of his own soul. And out of the distant echoes he would forge a Book of Vorbis, and Brutha suspected he knew what the commandments would be. There would be talk of holy wars and blood and crusades and blood and piety and blood. (p. 288)"

"Dhblah sidled closer. This was not hard. Dhblah sidled everywhere. Crabs thought he walked sideways. (p. 287)"

"Om, bumping along in Brutha's pack, began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist. (p. 274)"

"I taught myself. I'm entirely self-taught. You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing. (p. 271)"

""He's muffed it," said Simony. "he could have done anything with them. And he just told them a lot of facts. You can't inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol." (p. 263)"

""Listen, Urn. The Church is run by people like Vorbis. That's how it all works. Millions of people have died for—for nothing but lies. We can stop all that—" (p. 263)"

"And this will go on happening, whether you believe it is true or not. It is real. (p. 262)"

"The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish. (p. 261)"

"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). (p. 260)"

"It's not my fault if people misuse the—"

"A Great God. Mighty were his dominions and magnificent was his word. Armies went forth in his name and conquered and slew. That kind of thing. And now no one, not you, not me, no one, even knows who this god was or his name or what he looked like. (p. 257)"

"There's bones everywhere!"

"But how much worse to have been a god, and to now be no more than a smoky bundle of memories, blown back and forth across the sand made from the crumbled stones of your temples... (p. 247)"

"I saw you standing close to Vorbis," said Urn. "I thought you were protecting him."

"Do unto others before they do unto you. (p. 243)"

"He heard Om, slightly peevish, say: "People've got to believe in something. Might as well be gods. What else is there?""

""Why do people need gods?" Brutha persisted."

"What, lolling around all day while slaves do the real work? Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place while those fellows are living like—"

"Yeah. Pretty good, eh? Started off with nothing but a shepherd hearing voices in his head, ended up with two million people."

"You gave a god its shape, like a jelly fills a mold."

"Is there any water to drink?"

"Gods never need to be very bright when there are humans around to be it for them. (p. 221)"

"Gods are not very introspective. It has never been a survival trait. The ability to cajole, threaten, and terrify has always worked well enough. When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point-of-view is seldom necessary. (p. 221)"

"He thought: the worst thing about Vorbis isn't that he's evil, but that he makes good people do evil. He turns people into things like himself. (p. 209)"

"Thoughts always moved slowly through Brutha's mind, like icebergs. They arrived slowly and left slowly and when they were there they occupied a lot of space, much of it below the surface. (p. 209)"