The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.


Terry Pratchett

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Of course I'm sane, when trees start talking to me, I don't talk back.
TERRY PRATCHETT
The trouble is you can shut your eyes but you can’t shut your mind.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Ginger: You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?... It's all the people who never f...
TERRY PRATCHETT
There's a door."
"Where does it go?"
"It stays where it is, I think.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax could listen...
TERRY PRATCHETT
No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The enemy isn't men, or women, it's bloody stupid people and no one has the right to be stupid.
TERRY PRATCHETT
In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the
cat, although in this ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who t...
TERRY PRATCHETT
I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said i...
TERRY PRATCHETT
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
TERRY PRATCHETT
No one's policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Blessings be on this house," Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a w...
TERRY PRATCHETT
At such times the universe gets a little closer to us. They are strange times, times of beginnings a...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.
TERRY PRATCHETT
I saved a man's life once," said Granny. "Special medicine, twice a day. Boiled water with a bit of ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valle...
TERRY PRATCHETT
She had heard it said that, before you could understand anybody, you needed to walk a mile in their ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability wh...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Maurice watched them argue again. Humans, eh? Think they're lords of creation. Not like us cats. We ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The only superstition I have is that I must start a new book on the same day that I finish the last ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect.
TERRY PRATCHETT
The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes af...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. I'm fortunate; I ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
It was one of those problematic occasions with long silences, sporadic coughs, and people saying iso...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: 'Or Would You Rather Be ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.Elves are fantasti...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Rincewind had been told that death was just like going into another room. The difference is, when yo...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves ar...
TERRY PRATCHETT
"Why does everyone run toward a blood curdling scream?" mumbled the Senior Wrangler. "It is contrary...
TERRY PRATCHETT
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Sham Harga had run a succesful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
It could not be happening because this sort of thing did not happen. Any contradictory evidence coul...
TERRY PRATCHETT
An education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate...
TERRY PRATCHETT
The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then...
TERRY PRATCHETT
For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) ...
TERRY PRATCHETT
Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his l...
TERRY PRATCHETT
In the begining there was nothing, and it exploded.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.
TERRY PRATCHETT
The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head.
TERRY PRATCHETT
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which migh...
TERRY PRATCHETT