Terry Pratchett Believe Quotations

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people's memories for a while.

I believe it should be possible for someone stricken with a serious and ultimately fatal illness to choose to die peacefully with medical help, rather than suffer.

I don't believe in the war god of the Israelites. He's a bogeyman. Jesus preached the golden rule, by and large.

Humans need fantasy to be human. Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet you act, like there was some sort of rightness in the universe by which it may be judged:Yes. But people have got to believe that or what's the point?My point exactly.

A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him? I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true.

Well, it would have to be “The Man Who Was Thursday.” It’s a damn good read that I believe should be read by everyone in politics.

What was supposed to be so special about a full moon? It was only a big circle of light. And the dark of the moon was only darkness. But halfway between the two, when the moon was between the worlds of light and dark, when even the moon lived on the edge...maybe then a witch could believe in the moon.

No it's not!" said Constable Visit. "Atheism is a denial of a god." "Therefore It Is A Religious Position," said Dorfl. "Indeed, A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheist Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny.

Some of my best sources are ex-policemen, just to get a feeling of what it's like to be one. And it's quite different from being a civilian - except, of course, that I believe that policemen are just special sorts of civilians. Things like how hard it is to hold someone that doesn't want to be held. This is the kind of thing that is worth knowing.

Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear'.

Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.

The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about "a handsome prince"... was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called handsome? As for "a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long"... well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories don't want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told...

There are plenty of people who believe that Elvis is alive, or that aliens occasionally land here to do highly personal things to people, or that the whole idea of evolution is a conspiracy of godless scientists. Almost all of these people can vote and some of them have got guns.

You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?

Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.

There is always a choice." "You mean I could choose certain death?" "A choice nevertheless, or perhaps an alternative. You see I believe in freedom. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.

Anyway, lots of warrior tribes think that when they die, they go to a heavenly land somewhere," said the toad. "You know, where they can drink and fight and feast forever? So maybe this is theirs." "But this is a real place!" "So? That's what they believe. Besides, they're only small. Maybe the universe is a bit crowded and they have to put heavens anywhere there's room? I'm a toad, so you'll appreciate that I'm having to guess a lot here.

Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in a well-organised universe, but they wouldn't see the point of believing, of going around saying "O great table, without whom we are as naught." Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe in them or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees.

WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM? "Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?" NO "Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact." THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN. ... "Really? Then what would have happened, pray?" A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.

Why not? If enough people believe, you can be god of anything…

There’s no point in believing in things that exist.

People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so hard to believe in people.

Some people believe that when you die, you cross the River of Death and have to pay the ferryman. People don’t seem to worry about that these days. Perhaps there’s a bridge now.

I believe in reincarnation,” [Bjorn] said. I KNOW. “I tried to live a good life. Does that help?” THAT’S NOT UP TO ME. Death coughed. OF COURSE... SINCE YOU BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION... YOU’LL BE BJORN AGAIN.

YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. "So we can believe the big ones?" YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point MY POINT EXACTLY.

The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is so important to shoot missionaries on sight.

Some police forces would believe anything. Not the Metropolitan police, though. The Met was the hardest, most cynically pragmatic, most stubbornly down-to-earth police force in Britain. It would take a lot to faze a copper from the Met. It would take, for example, a huge, battered car that was nothing more nor less than a fireball, a blazing, roaring, twisted metal lemon from Hell, driven by a grinning lunatic in sunglasses, sitting amid the flames, trailing thick black smoke, coming straight at them through the lashing rain and wind at eighty miles an hour.That would do it every time.

In the Ramtops village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.

Another priest said,"Is it true you've said you'll believe in any god whose existence can be proved by logical debate?""Yes."Vimes had a feeling about the immediate future and took a few steps away from Dorfl."But the gods plainly do exist," said a priest."It Is Not Evident."A bolt of lightning lanced down through the clouds and hit Dorfl's helmet. There was a sheet of flame and then a trickling noise. Dorfl's molten armour formed puddles around his white-hot feet."I Don't Call That Much Of An Argument," said Dorfl calmly, from somewhere in the clouds of smoke.

I don't hold with paddlin' with the occult," said Granny firmly. "Once you start paddlin' with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you're believing in gods. And then you're in trouble." "But all them things exist," said Nanny Ogg. "That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.