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We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

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
Often
Longer
Boomers
Art
Century
Lesson
Past
Alive
Staying
Stills
Successful
Pass
Still
Dies
Forgotten
Hard
Age
Lessons
Way
Learn
Soon
Living
Baby
Harsher

More quotes by Terry Pratchett

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It's daft, locking us up, said Nanny. I'd have had us killed. That's because you're basically good, said Magrat. The good are innocent and create justice. The bad are guilty, which is why they invent mercy.
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I keep vaguely wondering what Macs are like, but the ones I've seen spend too much time being friendly.
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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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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.
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A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
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Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.
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There would be a price... But if you were worried about the price, then why were you in the shop?
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Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like 'his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,' and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.
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Last night there seemed to be a chance. Anything was possible last night. That was the trouble with last nights. They were always followed by this mornings.
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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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This is where the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world. And Fate always wins.
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We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am.
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You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you.
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Mr Lipwig, there's a lady in the hall to see you and we've thanked her for not smoking three times and she's still doing it!
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Ah, said Mr Pin. Right. I remember. You are concerned citizens. He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where 'traditional values' meant 'hang someone'.
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Hello, inner child, I'm the inner babysitter!
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There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.
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By the time you've reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.
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There were two ways of looking at the world, but only one when you are starving.
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Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.
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