Discworld

"We might find out why mankind is here, although that is more complicated and begs the question “Where else should we be?” (p. 2)"

"You couldn’t stop Tradition. You could only add to it. (p. 3)"

"Something as artificial and human as an hour wouldn’t last five minutes here. (p. 11)"

"They say the heat and the flies here can drive a man insane. But you don’t have to believe that, and nor does that bright mauve elephant that just cycled past. (pp. 11-12)"

"Ponder knew he should never have let Ridcully look at the invisible writings. Wasn’t it a basic principle never to let your employer know what it is you actually do all day? (p. 13)"

"It was Ponder’s particular genius that he had found a way around this by considering the phrase, “How do you know it’s not possible until you’ve tried?” And experiments with Hex, the University’s thinking engine, had found that, indeed, many things are not impossible until they have been tried. Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all. When something is tried, Ponder found, it often does turn out to be impossible very quickly, but it takes a little while for this to really be the case†—in effect, for the overworked laws of causality to hurry to the scene and pretend it has been impossible all along."

"Unfortunately, like many people who are instinctively bad at something, the Archchancellor prided himself on how good at it he was. Ridcully was to management what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Playgroup Association. His mental approach to it could be visualized as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled “Me, who does the telling” and, connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled “Everyone else.” (p. 16)"

"“When You’re Up to Your Ass in Alligators, Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life.” (p. 16)"

"Paleontology and archaeology and other skulduggery were not subjects that interested wizards. Things are buried for a reason, they considered. There’s no point in wondering what it was. Don’t go digging things up in case they won’t let you bury them again. (p. 18)"

"In theory, because of the nature of L-space, absolutely everything was available to him, but that only meant that it was more or less impossible to find whatever it was you were looking for, which is the purpose of computers. (p. 19)"

"Ponder Stibbons was one of those unfortunate people cursed with the belief that if only he found out enough things about the universe it would all, somehow, make sense. The goal is the Theory of Everything, but Ponder would settle for the Theory of Something and, late at night, when Hex appeared to be sulking, he despaired of even a Theory of Anything. (p. 19)"

"Any true wizard, faced with a sign like “Do not open this door. Really. We mean it. We’re not kidding. Opening this door will mean the end of the universe,” would automatically open the door in order to see what all the fuss was about. This made signs rather a waste of time, but at least it meant that when you handed what was left of the wizard to his grieving relatives you could say, as they grasped the jar, “We told him not to.” (p. 21)"

"Elsewhere, someone might have said, “It’s just books! Books aren’t dangerous!” But even ordinary books are dangerous, and not only the ones like Make Gelignite the Professional Way. A man sits in some museum somewhere and writes a harmless book about political economy and suddenly thousands of people who haven’t even read it are dying because the ones who did haven’t got the joke. Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain caliber. (p. 21)"

"“But we’re a university! We have to have a library!” said Ridcully. “It adds tone. What sort of people would we be if we didn’t go into the Library?” ”Students,” said Senior Wrangler morosely. (p. 22)"

"Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn’t have places. There were rooms containing rooms which, if you entered them, turned out to contain the room you’d started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line. (pp. 32-33)"

"Logic is a wonderful thing but doesn’t always beat actual thought. (p. 34)"

"“I always thought that old fossils might have a lot to teach us,” said Ponder. “Perhaps I was wrong,” he added darkly. “Well, I for one have never believed all that business about dead animals turning into stone,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “It’s against all reason. What’s in it for them?” “So how do you explain fossils, then?” said Ponder. “Ah, you see, I don’t,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, with a triumphant smile. “It saves so much trouble in the long run. How do skinless sausages hold together, Mister Stibbons?” “What? Eh? How should I know something like that?” “Really? You don’t know that but you think you’re entirely qualified to know how the whole universe was put together, do you? Anyway, you don’t have to explain fossils. They’re there. Why try to turn everything into a big mystery? If you go around asking questions the whole time you’ll never get anything done.” (p. 37)"

"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. Later, when he learned with some surprise what the word actually meant, he’d been equally certain he wasn’t one. He was a person who divided the world quite simply into people who were trying to kill him and people who weren’t. That didn’t leave much room for fine details like what color anyone was. (pp. 43-44)"

"Rincewind awoke with a scream, to get it over with. (p. 57)"

"“I’ve been lookin’ at him. He’s not even heroic. He’s just in the right place at the right time.” The old man indicated that this was maybe the definition of a hero. (p. 61)"

"Creators aren’t gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It’s men that make gods. This explains a lot. (p. 61)"

"“Last one into the water’s a man standing all by himself on the beach” he shouted. (p. 62)"

"In fact she moved with more than dignity, which is something that is given away free with kings and bishops; what she had was respectability, which is homemade out of cast iron. (p. 70)"

"“I’m trying to remember how you tell the time by looking at the sun.” ”I should leave it for a while,” said the Senior Wrangler, squinting under his hand. “It’s too bright to see the numbers at the moment.” (p. 72)"

"“Why me?” The kangaroo scratched its nose. “’s got to be someone,” it said. (p. 86)"

"Rincewind settled back. “I’m glad I’m not religious,” he said. “It must be very complicated.” (p. 97)"

"He was not going to be found wanting when duty called. He did not intend to be found at all. (p. 97)"

"“And you know what I think about evolution, Mister Stibbons. If it happens, and frankly I’ve always considered it a bit of a fairy story, it has to happen fast. Look at lemmings, for one thing.” “Lemmings, sir?” “Right. The little blighters keep chargin’ over cliffs, right? And how many have ever changed into birds on the way down, eh? Eh?” “Well, none, of cou—” “There’s my point,” said Ridcully triumphantly. “And it’s no good one of them on the way down thinking, ‘Hey, maybe I should waggle my claws a bit,’ is it? No, what it ought to do is decide really positively about growing some real wings.” “What, in a couple of seconds? While they’re plunging towards the rocks?” “Best time.” “But lemmings don’t just turn into birds, sir!” “Lucky for them if they could, though, eh?” (p. 107)"

"It was a road. At least, it was a long flat piece of desert with wheel ruts in it. Rincewind stared at it. A road. Roads went somewhere. Sooner or later they went everywhere. And when you got there, you generally found walls, buildings, harbors...boats. And incidentally a shortage of talking kangaroos. That was practically one of the hallmarks of civilization. (p. 110)"

"It wasn’t that he was against anyone saving the world, or whatever subset of it apparently wanted saving. He just felt that it didn’t need saving by him. (p. 110)"

"He hated weapons, and not just because they’d so often been aimed at him. You got into more trouble if you had a weapon. People shot you instantly if they thought you were going to shoot them. But if you were unarmed, they often stopped to talk. Admittedly, they tended to say things like, “You’ll never guess what we’re going to do to you, pal,” but that took time. And Rincewind could do a lot with a few seconds. He could use them to live longer in. (p. 114)"

"All bastards are bastards, but some bastards is bastards. (p. 114)"

"Above Ponder, he felt, were a lot of dead men’s shoes. And they had living men’s feet in them, and were stamping down hard. They never bothered to learn anything, they never bothered to remember anything apart from how much better things used to be, they bickered like a lot of children and the only one who ever said anything sensible said it in orangutan. (p. 122)"

"Discworld constellations changed frequently as the world moved through the void, which meant that astrology was cutting-edge research rather than, as elsewhere, a clever way of avoiding a proper job. It was amazing how human traits and affairs could so reliably and continuously be guided by a succession of big balls of plasma billions of miles away, most of whom have never even heard of humanity. (p. 127)"

"It had been going so well. They almost seemed up to speed. This may have been what caused Ponder to act like the man who, having so far fallen a hundred feet without any harm, believes that the last few inches to the ground will be a mere formality. (p. 129)"

"“I think there may be one or two steps in your logic that I have failed to grasp, Mister Stibbons,” said the Archchancellor coldly. “I suppose you’re not intending to shoot your own grandfather, by any chance?” “Of course not!” snapped Ponder, “I don’t even know what he looked like. He died before I was born.” “Ah-hah!” (p. 130)"

"Ponder struggled to find a crack in his Archchancellor’s brain into which could be inserted the crowbar of understanding, and for a few vain seconds thought he had found one. (p. 130)"

"Ponder felt the sea of mutual incomprehension rising around him, but he refused to drown. (p. 131)"

"There’s a certain kind of manager who is known by his call of “My door is always open” and it is probably a good idea to beat yourself to death with your own CV rather than work for him. In Ridcully’s case, however, he meant, “My door is always open because then, when I’m bored, I can fire my crossbow right across the hall and into the target just above the Bursar’s desk.” (p. 132)"

"The god, almost alone among gods, thought questions were a good thing. He was in fact committed to people questioning assumptions, throwing aside old superstitions, breaking the shackles of irrational prejudice and, in short, exercising the brains their god had given them, except of course they hadn’t been given by any god, lord knows, so what they really ought to do was exercise those brains developed over millennia in response to the external stimuli and the need to control those hands with their opposable thumbs, another damn good idea that he was very proud of. Or would have been, of course, if he existed. (pp. 133-134)"

"The god hadn’t programmed this bit. The whole problem with evolution, he’d told himself, was that it wouldn’t obey orders. Sometimes, matter thinks for itself. (p. 135)"

"A sign attached to the tower read: “Dijabringabeeralong: Check your Weapons.” “Yep, still got all mine, no worries,” said Mad. (p. 136)"

"And he was pretty sure that there was no way you could get a cross between a human and a sheep. If there was, people would definitely have found out by now, especially in the more isolated rural districts. (p. 142)"

"Never sick himself, he tended to the belief that sickness in other people was caused by sloppy thinking. (p. 147)"

"“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.” (p. 150)"

"To be frank, I find religion rather offensive. (p. 161)"

"The wizards drew closer. They were not, of course, afraid of gods, but gods tended to have uncertain tempers and a wise man kept away from them. (p. 162)"

"“I really couldn’t see the point of the whole business, to tell you the truth. Shouting, smiting, getting angry all the time...don’t think anyone was getting anything out of it, really. But the worst part...You know the worst part? The worst part was that if you actually stopped the smiting, people wandered off and worshipped someone else. Hard to believe, isn’t it? They’d say things like, ‘Things were a lot better when there was more smiting,’ and ‘If there was more smiting, it’d be a lot safer to walk the streets.’ Especially since all that’d really happened was that some poor shepherd who just happened to be in the wrong place during a thunderstorm had caught a stray bolt. And then the priests would say, ‘Well, we all know about shepherds, don’t we, and now the gods are angry and we could do with a much bigger temple, thank you.” “Typical priestly behavior,” sniffed the Dean. “But they often believed it!” the god almost wailed. “It was really so depressing. I think that before we made humanity, we broke the mold. There’d be a bad weather front, a few silly shepherds would happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and next thing you know it was standing room only on the sacrificial stones and you couldn’t see for the smoke.” (pp. 163-164)"

"Usually they defined “listening” as a period in which you worked out what you were going to say next. (p. 169)"

"Ponder shook his head. There were times when the desire to climb the thaumaturgical ladder was seriously blunted, and one of them was when you saw what was on top. (p. 170)"