"“I’m sure it can wait, Commander.” “Yes, sir. That’s the trouble, sir. That’s what it’s doing.” Vetinari waved a languid hand. “Full carts congesting the street, Vimes, is a sign of progress,” he declared. “Only in the figurative sense, sir,” said Vimes. (p. 9)"

"Coffee was only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your slightly older self. (p. 186)"

"He preached to the superiority of dwarf over troll, and that the duty of every dwarf was to follow in the footsteps of their forefathers and remove trollkind from the face of the world. It was written in some holy book, apparently, so that made it okay, and probably compulsory. (p. 24)"

"The important thing is not to shout at this point, Vimes told himself. Do not…what do they call it…go postal? Treat this as a learning exercise. Find out why the world is not as you thought it was. Assemble the facts, digest the information, consider the implications. Then go postal. But with precision. (p. 53)"

"In one way or another, are we not all looking for our cow?"

"Maybe it was like the Post Office, maybe the profit turned up spread around the whole of society."

"I can fake sincerity so well that even I can’t tell."

"Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known."

"He ought to be ashamed. It was one thing to put words in the mouths of the gods; priests did it all the time. But this, this was a step too far. You had to be some kind of bastard to think of something like this."

"It was the heart of any scam or fiddle. Keep the punter uncertain, or, if he is certain, make him certain of the wrong thing."

"If there’s one thing a wizard hates, it’s having to wait while the person in front of them is of two minds about coleslaw. It’s a salad bar, they say, it’s got the kind of stuff salad bars have, if it was surprising it wouldn’t be a salad bar, you’re not here to look at it. What do you expect to find? Rhino chunks? Pickled coelacanth?"

"Peel away the lies, and the truth would emerge, naked and ashamed and with nowhere else to hide."

"“You can’t do that!” Greenyham protested weakly, but the fire had drained out of him. Mr. Stowley had collapsed on the floor, with his head in his hands. “Can I not?” said Vetinari. “I am a tyrant. It’s what we do.”"

"What was magic, after all, but something that happened at the snap of a finger? Where was the magic in that? It was mumbled words and weird drawings in old books, and in the wrong hands it was dangerous as hell, but not half as dangerous as it could be in the right hands. The universe was full of the stuff; it made the stars stay up and the feet stay down. But what was happening now…this was magical. Ordinary men had dreamed it up and put it together, building towers on rafts in swamps and across the frozen spines of mountains. They cursed and, worse, used logarithms. They’d waded through rivers and dabbled in trigonometry. They hadn’t dreamed, in the way people usually used the word, but they’d imagined a different world, and bent metal around it. And out of all the sweat and swearing and mathematics this…thing, dropping words across the world as softly as starlight."

"Every organization needs at least one person who knows what’s going on, and why it’s happening, and who’s doing it."

"You did what you were told or you didn’t get paid, and if things went wrong it wasn’t your problem. It was the fault of whatever idiot has accepted this message for sending in the first place. No one cared about you, and everyone at headquarters was an idiot. It wasn’t your fault, no one listened to you. Headquarters had even started an Employee of the Month scheme to show how much they cared. That was how much they didn’t care."

"There was a pregnant pause. It gave birth to a lot of little pauses, each one more deeply embarrassing than its parent."

"It was like looking for piranhas in a river choked with weeds. There were a lot of bones on the bottom. But, although sometimes you thought you’d glimpsed a flash of silver, you could never be sure you’d seen a fish. The only way to be sure was to jump in."

"The only way to get something to turn up when you need it is to need it to turn up."

"They’d saved the city with gold more easily, at that point, than any hero could have managed with steel. But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever—provided, naturally, that you don’t go and look. This is known as Finance."

"You know how to pray, don’t you? You just put your hands together—and hope."

"How could people be so stupid? They seemed to cling to ignorance because it smelled familiar."

"“But the gods are on his side, Reacher,” said Nutmeg. “Let’s talk about that, shall we?” said Gilt. “Does that claim strike anyone else as odd? The gods are not generally known for no-frills gifts, are they? Especially not ones that you can bite. No, these days they restrict themselves to things like grace, patience, fortitude, and inner strength. Things you can’t see. Things that have no value. Gods tend to be more interested in prophets, not profits, a-ha.”"

"People enjoy the experience of being fooled, if it promises a certain amount of entertainment."

"Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show."

"It was garbage, but it had been cooked by an expert. Oh, yes. You had to admire the way perfectly innocent words were mugged, ravished, stripped of all true meaning and decency, and then sent to walk the gutter for Reacher Gilt, although “synergistically” had probably been a whore from the start."

"Meaningless, stupid words, from people without wisdom or intelligence or any skill beyond the ability to water the currency of expression. Oh, the Grand Trunk stood for everything, from life and liberty to Mom’s homemade Distressed Pudding. It stood for everything, except anything."

"Sending no messages would send quite the wrong message."

"“But he is a man of…ingenious resource.” That seemed to Moist to be a very careful way of saying “murderous bastard.”"

"Tilden was nearly seventy. At a time like that, a man learned to treat his memory as only a rough guide to events. (p. 154)"

"He didn’t say this aloud, because although an elderly man probably has a lot less future than a man of twenty, he is far more careful about it…"

"“The world is full of things worth more than gold. But we dig the damn stuff up and then bury it in a different hole. Where’s the sense in that? What are we, magpies? Is it all about the gleam? Good heavens, potatoes are worth more than gold!” “Surely not!” “If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, what would you prefer, a bag of potatoes or a bag of gold?” “Yes, but a desert island isn’t Ankh-Morpork!” “And that proves gold is only valuable because we agree it is, right? It’s just a dream. But a potato is always worth a potato, anywhere. Add a knob of butter and a pinch of salt and you’ve got a meal, anywhere. Bury gold in the ground and you’ll be worrying about thieves forever. Bury a potato and in due season you could be looking at a dividend of a thousand percent.” “Can I assume for a moment that you don’t intend to put us on the potato standard?” said Sacharissa sharply. Moist smiled. “No, it won’t be that.”"

"Pony sighed. They never took an interest. It was just money. They didn’t know how anything worked. And then suddenly they needed to know, and you had to use baby talk."

"The people who guard the rainbow don’t like those who get in the way of the sun."

"“I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir.” That was an automatic reaction; it made life simpler. (p. 187)"

"“You speak to the gods and the gods listen,” said Miss Dearheart, grinning. “They told you where the treasure was. Now, that’s what I call religion. Incidentally, how did you know the money was there?” “You don’t believe in any gods?” “No, of course not. Not while people like Reacher Gilt walk under the sky. All there is, is us.”"

"“You’re giving me a stern look, miss.” “Well, yes. It was rather a chilly decision, wasn’t it?” “Someone has to make ’em,” said Mrs. Ogg sharply. “Besides, I’ve been around for some time and I’ve noticed that them as has it in them to shine will shine through six layers of muck, whereas those who ain’t shiny won’t shine however much you buff ’em. You may think otherwise, but it was me standing there.” (p. 279)"

"Susan was sensible. It was, she knew, a major character flaw. It did not make you popular, or cheerful, and—this seemed to her to be the most unfair bit—it didn’t even make you right. But it did make you definite, and she was definite that what was happening around her was not, in any accepted sense, real. (p. 281)"

"Dullness. Only humans could have invented it. What imaginations they had. (p. 339)"

"He knew that young children could see him because they hadn't yet developed that convenient and selective blindness that comes with the intimation of personal mortality. (p. 339)"

"“Let’s all keep our parts to ourselves,” and suddenly she gave Susan a wink, “as the High Priest said to the actress.” (p. 274)"

"“One of life’s little certainties,” said Susan, standing on the edge of the museum’s parapet, “is that there is generally a last chocolate hidden in all those empty wrappers.” (p. 284)"

""Carrot, I think you've got something wrong with your head," said Angua."

"“We don’t use people as furniture,” said Susan. “But surely they will not be aware of it,” said her ladyship. “We will,” said Lobsang. “That’s the point, really.” (p. 273)"

"It was a lie. But he wasn’t ready for the truth. By the look of his face, he wasn’t even ready for the lie. (p. 273)"

"He'd got nowhere, and he'd traveled a long way to get there. (p. 232)"

"He reached into his pack for the battered copy of the Way, and opened it at random. Koan ninety-seven: “Do unto otters as you would have them do unto you.” Hmm. No real help there. Besides, he’d occasionally been unsure that he’d written that one down properly, although it certain had worked. He’d always left aquatic mammals well alone, and they had done the same to him. He tried again. Koan one hundred and twenty-four: “It’s amazing what you see if you keep your eyes open.” (p. 287)"

"As far as Death was aware, the sole reason for any human association with pigs and lambs was as a prelude to chops and sausages. Quite why they should dress up for children's wallpaper as well was a mystery. Hello, little folk, this is what you're going to eat…He felt that if only he could find the key to it, he'd know a lot more about human beings. (p. 339)"

"To all the fighters for peace. (dedication)"

"Seeing things a human shouldn’t have to see makes us human. (p. 274)"