"You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, traveling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abcesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say 'yes'."

"What your soldier wants -- really, really wants -- is no-one shooting back at him."

"Oh, come on. Revelation was a mushroom dream that belonged in the Apocrypha. The New Testament is basically about what happened when God got religion"

"I once absent-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce"

"Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care."

"Oh dear, I'm feeling political today. It's just that it's dawned on me that 'zero tolerance' only seems to mean putting extra police in poor, run-down areas, and not in the Stock Exchange."

"It's amazing how fast gold works."

"While a book has got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the reader it's got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the writer as well."

"There should be a notice ahead of the movie that says 'This movie is PG. Can you read? You are a Parent. Do you understand what Guidance is? Or are you just another stupid toddler who thinks they're an adult simply because they've grown older and, unfortunately, have developed fully-functioning sexual organs? Would you like some committee somewhere to decide *everything* for you? Get a damn grip, will you? And shut the wretched kid up !'"

"'They can ta'k our lives but they can never ta'k our freedom!' Now there's a battle cry not designed by a clear thinker..."

"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combatting the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon..."

"Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page."

"I don't like the place at all. It's all wrong. An imposition on the Landscape. I reckon that Stonehenge was build by the contemporary equivalent of Microsoft, whereas Avebury was definitely an Apple circle."

""Educational" refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger."

"Never trust any complicated cocktail that remains perfectly clear until the last ingredient goes in, and then immediately clouds."

"I keep vaguely wondering what Macs are like, but the ones I've seen spend too much time being friendly."

"I dare say that quite a few people have contemplated death for reasons that much later seemed to them to be quite minor. If we are to live in a world where a socially acceptable "early death" can be allowed, it must be allowed as a result of careful consideration. Let us consider me as a test case. As I have said, I would like to die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod before the disease takes me over and I hope that will not be for quite some time to come, because if I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice."

"Nerds are the only people who know how to operate the video recorder."

"The space between the young readers eyeballs and the printed page is a holy place and officialdom should trample all over it at their peril."

"As for The Mapp... I suspect it'll never get a US publication. It seemed to frighten US publishers. They don't seem to understand it. That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans: A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him? I make no suggestion that one side or the other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true."

"Life doesn't happen in chapters — at least, not regular ones. Nor do movies. Homer didn't write in chapters. I can see what their purpose is in children's books ("I'll read to the end of the chapter, and then you must go to sleep") but I'm blessed if I know what function they serve in books for adults."

"Wikipedia, eh? Must be accurate then!"

"'Well ... welcome. My house is your house', his brow suddenly furrowed and he looked worried, 'although only in a metaphorical sense, you understand, because I would not, much as I always admired your straightforward approach, and indeed your forthright stance, actually give you my house, it being the only house I have, and therefore the term is being extended in an, as it were, gratuitous fashion —'"

"In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this."

"No, I happen to be one of those people whose memory shuts down under pressure. The answers would come to me in the middle of the night in my sleep! Besides, I am a millionaire."

"My programming language was solder."

"Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one."

"Imagination, not intelligence, made us human."

"Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages."

"Consider the situation. There you are, forehead like a set of balconies, worrying about the long-term effects of all this new 'fire' stuff on the environment, you're being chased and eaten by most of the planet's large animals, and suddenly tiny versions of one of the worst of them wanders into the cave and starts to purr."

"Everyone's heard of Erwin Schrodinger's famous thought experiment. You put a cat in a box with a bottle of poison, which many people would suggest is about as far as you need to go."

"Next comes the realist phase ("After all, from a purely geometrical point of view a cat is only a tube with a door at the top.")."

"It's an interesting fact that fewer than 17 % of Real cats end their lives with the same name they started with. Much family effort goes into selecting one at the start ("She looks like a Winnifred to me"), and the as the years roll by it suddenly finds itself being called Meepo or Ratbag."

"Cats don't hunt seals. They would if they knew what they were and where to find them. But they don't, so that's all right."

"Boot-faced cats aren't born but made, often because they've tried to outstare or occasionally rape a speeding car and have been repaired by a vet who just pulled all the bits together and stuck the stitches in where there was room."

"Our garden was debated territory between five local cats, and we'd heard that the best way to keep other cats out of the garden was to have one yourself. A moment's rational thought here will spot the slight flaw in this reasoning."

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

"'But we should kill him!' 'No. You've been listen to Brocando too often,' said Bane. Brocando bristled. 'You know what he is! Why not kill--' he began, but he was interrupted. 'Because it doesn't matter what he is. It matters what we are.'"

"'Waiting is the worst part,' said Pismire. 'No it isn't,' said Owlglass, who wasn't even being trusted to hold a sword. 'I expect that having long sharp swords stuck in you is the worst part.'"

"'What would Deftmenes be if we went around obeying orders all the time?' 'They might be ruling the Carpet,' said Pismire. 'Ha!' said Brocando, 'but the trouble about obeying orders is, it becomes a habit. And then everything depends on who's giving the orders.'"

"As they say in Discworld, we are trying to unravel the Mighty Infinite using a language which was designed to tell one another where the fresh fruit was."

"The sign outside the shop said Apothecary, which meant that the shop was owned by a sort of early chemist, who would give you herbs and things until you got better or at least stopped getting any worse."

"Normally its narrow streets were crowded with stalls, and people from all over the Carpet. They'd all be trying to cheat one another in that open-and-above-board way known as 'doing business'."

"The Deftmenes are mad and the Dumii are sane, thought Snibril, and that's just the same as being mad except that it's quieter. If only you could mix them together, you'd end up with normal people."

"Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants — the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare from becoming a mere lower-class brawl."

"'Stop that!' he shouted. 'You're soldiers! You're not supposed to fight!'"

"'Whose side are they on?' said Brocando. 'Sides? Their own, I suppose, just like everyone else.'"

"'I can't have your subjects throwing my family over the balcony, that would never do.' 'Good,' said Snibril. 'I'll do it myself.'"

"When they're standing right in front of you, kings are a kind of speech impediment."

"Anyway, just because you're sworn enemies doesn't mean you can't be friends, does it?"