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One of the hardest lessons in young Sam's life had been finding out that the people in charge weren't in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking.

Terry Pratchett

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Terry Pratchett
Age: 66 †
Born: 1948
Born: April 28
Died: 2015
Died: March 12
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Beaconsfield
Buckinghamshire
Terence David John Terry Pratchett
Terence David John Pratchett
Sir Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John Pratchett
Instead
Charge
Young
Governments
Government
Weren
Whole
Hardest
Made
Findings
Thinking
Finding
Life
Lessons
Staffed
People
Plans
Grip

More quotes by Terry Pratchett

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They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.
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And what would humans be without love? Rare, said Death.
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You were the kind of kid who couldn't see the difference between throwing rocks at a cat and setting it on fire.
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Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known.
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When people say clearly something that means there's a huge crack in their argument and they know things aren't clear at all.
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He felt that the darkness was full of unimaginable horrors - and the trouble with unimaginable horrors was that they were only too easy to imagine.
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God does not play games with His loyal servants, said the Metatron, but in a worried tone of voice. Whooo-eee, said Crowley. Where have you been?
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A lot hinges on the fact that, in most circumstances, people are not allowed to hit you with a mallet. They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say, 'Do not do this' in the hope that it'll work, but if it doesn't, then they shrug, because there is, really, no real mallet at all.
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Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we'd be melting the bronze already.
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I have a living will and I have friends, and I have money and I have hope.
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He thought about how it might be to be, say, a fox confronted with an angry sheep. A sheep moreover, that could afford to employ wolves.
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There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.
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People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as Is this the laundry? How do you spell surreptitious? and, on a regular basis, Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.
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I'm referred to, I see, as 'the biggest banker in modern publishing'. Now there's a line that needed the celebrated Guardian proof-reading.
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The Kraken stirs. And ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance.
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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.
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It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself. But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.
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Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
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I have a suspicion - I have to be careful what I say - that you might actually find the best comics actually written by people who are comics writers and who aren't setting out to do graphic novels.
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If I had been Terry Pratchett the farmer, or Terry Pratchett the dentist, nobody would have paid any attention if I had announced I had Alzheimer's. But there is something fascinating about an author losing the power over words.
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