"You’re just a bully who found it easier and easier and decided that everybody else wasn’t really a real person, not like you, and when you know that, there’s no crime too big, is there? No crime you won’t do. (p. 432)"

"They think that I’m like them! I hate that! They just don’t get it! They’ve got on well for years without ever having to think differently, and now they don’t know how! (p. 419)"

"But sometimes you should follow the arrogance…You should look for those who can’t believe that the law would ever catch them, who believe that they act out of a right that the rest of us do not have. The job of the officer of the law is to let them know that they are wrong! (p. 403)"

"Woman’s logic, Sam thought: everything is going to be all right because it ought to be all right. The trouble is, reality is never as simple as that and doesn’t allow for paperwork. (p. 437)"

"He was eating a roasted rabbit like there was no tomorrow—which clearly had been the case for the rabbit. (p. 417)"

"The aristocrats, if such they could be called, generally hated the whole concept of the train on the basis that it would encourage the lower classes to move about and not always be available. (p. 89)"

"Good old tobacco, nothing harmful about tobacco, and smuggling it was, well, it was really like a game, everybody knew that. Nothing wrong with outsmarting the revenue, that’s what the revenue was for! Vimes thought, isn’t that how I’ve always said it worked? Little crimes breeding big crimes. You smile at little crimes and then big crimes blow your head off. (p. 270)"

"He was a scalawag, a chancer, a ruthless fighter and a dangerous driver of bargains over the speed limit. Since all this was a bit of a mouthful, he was referred to as a successful businessman, since that more or less amounted to the same thing. (p. 277)"

"As for the law, don’t try to talk to me about the law. I am not above the law, but I stand right underneath it, and I hold it up!…Justice, not convenience, will be served. (p. 303; ellipsis represents a brief elision for the sake of continuity)"

"It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was “policeman.” If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers. (pp. 244-245)"

"Good people have no business being so bad. Goodness is about what you do. Not what you pray to. (p. 220)"

"“One day I thought, ‘How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be and, the and I and it, and so on, and there’s a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has been done for you.’ That was fifty-seven books ago. It seems to have worked.” (p. 220)"

"Vetinari always said, “What is normal? Normal is yesterday and last week and last month taken together.” (p. 311)"

"There were times when the world did not need policemen, because what it really did need was for somebody who knew what they were doing to shut it all down and start it all up again so that this time it could be done properly… (p. 234)"

"Where there are little crimes, large crimes are not far behind. (p. 200)"

"“The son? The criminal?” “I believe, Sam, that the word is entrepreneur.” (p. 212)"

"Oh dear, you of all people must recognize a substition when you’re possessed by it? It’s the opposite of a superstition: it’s real even if you don’t believe in it. (p. 217)"

"I know that monks have been carefully shepherding the world, but I rather think they don’t realize that the sheep sometimes have better ideas. (p. 102)"

"Keeping secrets made you powerful. Being powerful earned you respect. Respect was hard currency."

"He was bewildered. This didn’t matter very much; bewilderment was often a copper’s lot. His job was to make sense of the world, and there were times that he wished the world would meet him halfway. (p. 396)"

"I tell you, commander, it’s true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they’re doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved. (p. 219)"

"Whoever said that a soft answer turners away wrath had never worked in a bar. (p. 86)"

"“Of course, we went on trying, because that’s the military way!” “You mean, pile dreadful failure on top of failure?” said Vimes. (p. 106)"

"Well, we live and learn, Vimes thought, or perhaps more importantly, we learn and live. (p. 116)"

"As far as Sam Vimes was concerned, he liked tea, but tea was not tea if, even before drinking, you could see the bottom of the cup. Still worse than the stuff he was being offered was the conversation, which inclined toward bonnets, a subject on which his ignorance was not just treasured but venerated. (p. 74)"

"“Your grandfather always told me that if I saw a big pile of muck in a field I should kick it around a bit so as to spread it evenly, because that way all the grass will grow properly.” She smiled at Vimes’s expression and said, “Well, it’s true, dear. A lot of farming is about manure.” (p. 53)"

"Vimes said,“Do you serve anything that isn’t alcoholic?” The barman very carefully hung the tankard on a hook over the bar and then looked directly at Vimes and said, without rancor, “Well, you see, sir, this is what we call a pub. People gets stuffy about it if I leaves out the alcohol.” (pp. 59-60)"

"There passed between husband and wife a look that deserved the status of telepathy. (p. 132)"

"“I don’t care to drink with them as grinds the faces of the poor!” Vimes held his gaze, and said, “Sorry, I didn’t bring my grinder with me today.” (p. 64)"

"You are mistaking value for worth, I think. (p. 37)"

"I’ve been following the noble profession herming here for nigh on fifty-seven years, practicing piety, sobriety, celibacy and the pursuit of the true wisdom in the tradition of my father and grandfather and great-grandfather before me. (p. 42)"

"Aristocrats don’t notice philosophical conundra. They just ignore them. Philosophy includes contemplating the possibility that you might be wrong, sir, and a real aristocrat knows that he is always right. It’s not vanity, you understand, it’s built-in absolute certainty. They may sometimes be as mad as a hatful of spoons, but they are always definitely and certainly mad. (p. 44)"

"Vimes’s lack of interest in other people’s children was limitless, but he could count. “And the last one?” “Oh Hermione, she may be difficult as she has rather scandalized the family, at least in their opinion.” “How?” “She’s a lumberjack.” Vimes thought for a moment and said, “Well, dear, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a man with a lot of wood must be in want of a wife who can handle a great big—” (p. 31)"

"Of course people here would be on the take. You didn’t need evidence. It was human nature. (p. 26)"

"Very interested indeed in rubber, so I heard, but it takes all sorts to make a world and it would be a funny old place if we were all the same, and especially if we were all like him. (p. 48)"

"I’m not the law, no policeman is the law. A policeman is just a man, but when he wakes up in the morning it is the law that is his alarm clock. (p. 144)"

"Sybil leafed through a small pile of pastel envelopes that had been inserted into her breakfast tray. “Well, the news has got around,” she said.“The Duchess of Keepsake has invited us to a ball, Sir Henry and Lady Withering have invited us to a ball, and Lord and Lady Hangfinger have invited us to, yes, a ball!” “Well,” said Vimes,“that’s a lot of—” “Don’t you dare, Sam!” his wife warned and Vimes finished lamely, “...invitations?” (p. 30)"

"“You’ve taken the first step.” “There’s a second step?” said Tiffany. “No; there’s another first step. Every step is a first step if it’s a step in the right direction.”"

"It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong."

"“You know my position, Drumknott. I have no particular objection to people taking substances that make them feel better, or more contented, or, for that matter, see little dancing purple fairies—or even their god if it comes to that. It’s their brain, after all, and society can have no claim on it, providing they’re not operating heavy machinery at the time.” (p. 4)"

"All this got a big cheer, which is what generally happens when people have worked out that they are likely to get something that they won’t have to pay for."

"People aren’t just people; they are people surrounded by circumstances."

"Your power is only rumor and lies, she thought. You bore your way into people when they are uncertain and weak and worried and frightened, and they think their enemy is other people when their enemy is, and always will be, you—the master of lies. Outside, you are fearsome; inside, you are nothing but weakness. Inside, I am flint."

"Among his curses was doing the paperwork. There was always paperwork. It is well known that any drive to reduce paperwork only results in extra paperwork. (p. 5)"

"“I want a proper school, sir, to teach reading and writing, and most of all thinking, sir, so people can find out what they’re good at, because someone doing what they really like is always an asset to any country, and too often people never find out until it’s too late.” She deliberately looked away from the sergeant, but her words had caused a susurration around the room that Tiffany was glad to hear. She drowned it out with “There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having. And I’d like the boys to learn about girls and I’d like the girls to learn about boys. Learning is about finding out who you are, what you are, where you are and what you are standing on and what you are good at and what’s over the horizon and, well, everything. It’s about finding the place where you fit. I found the place where I fit, and I would like everybody else to find theirs.”"

"She tried not to be gloomy at funerals. People lived, and died, and were remembered. It happened in the same way that winter follows summer. It was not a wrong thing. There were tears, of course, but they were for those who were left; those who had gone on did not need them."

"Tiffany thought, Is this the right song for a funeral? And then she thought, Of course it is! It’s a wonderful turn and it tells us that one day all of us will die but—and this is the important thing—we are not dead yet."

"“Do you believe in luck?” said the Duchess. “I believe in not having to believe in luck,” said Tiffany."

"Tiffany opened her mouth to reply before she had any idea what she was going to say, but that is not unusual among human beings."