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But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.

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
Realize
Realizing
Tortoise
Courses
Tortoises
Course
Eagle
Learn
Participating
Natural
Crude
Form
Eagles
Doe
Selection

More quotes by Terry Pratchett

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Monsters are getting more uppity, too (...) I heard where this guy, he killed this monster in this lake, no problem, stuck its arm up over the door (...) and you know what? Its mum come and complained. Its actual mum come right down to the hall next day and complained. Actually complained. That's the respect you get.
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Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
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but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?
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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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It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive you could get death for free.
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Often I sort of work up and down the manuscript. I sometimes used to go ahead of myself to see what was going to happen next, to make certain it fits what was going to be happening soon.
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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.)
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There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.
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It takes forty men with their feet on the ground to keep one man with his head in the air.
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Shoes, men, coffins never accept the first one you see.
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If you want to change a whole people, then you start with the girls. It stands to reason: they learn faster, and they pass on what they learn to their children.
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Right! Right! You can get there! I can get there! You're a natural at counting to two! I'm a nat'ral at counting to two! If you can count to two, you can count to anything! If I can count to two, I can count to anything! And then the world is your mollusc! My mollusc! What's a mollusc?
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Classically, very few people have considered that cleanliness is next to godliness. A rank loincloth and hair in an advanced state of matted entanglement have generally been the badges of office of prophets whose injunction to disdain earthly things starts with soap.
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I can see we're going to get along like a house on fire, said Miss Tick. There may be no survivors.
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Dark Fantasy is just another way of saying Horror.
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This is space. It's sometimes called the final frontier. (Except that of course you can't have a final frontier, because there'd be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it's pretty penultimate . . .)
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Everywhere's been where it is ever since it was first put there. It's called geography.
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A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
Terry Pratchett
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Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, but they seldom came near the village-the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges.
Terry Pratchett
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Life is just chemicals. A drop here, a drip there, everything's changed. A mere dribble of fermented juices and sudenlly you're going to live another few hours.
Terry Pratchett