Small Gods Quotes

“Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“What have I always believed?
That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“What's a philosopher?' said Brutha.
Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,' said a voice in his head.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“The Ephebians believed that every man should have the vote (provided that he wasn't poor, foreign, nor disqualified by reason of being mad, frivolous, or a woman). Every five years someone was elected to be Tyrant, provided he could prove that he was honest, intelligent, sensible, and trustworthy. Immediately after he was elected, of course, it was obvious to everyone that he was a criminal madman and totally out of touch with the view of the ordinary philosopher in the street looking for a towel. And then five years later they elected another one just like him, and really it was amazing how intelligent people kept on making the same mistakes.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that'd happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time...”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“The turtle moves.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“There’s no point in believing in things that exist.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“I think," he said, "I think, if you want thousands, you have to fight for one.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Words are the litmus paper of the mind.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all is truth beauty and is beauty truth, and does a falling tree in the forest make a sound if there's no one there to hear it, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of 'em says, incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Thou shalt not submit thy god to market forces.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“It's hard to explain," said Brutha. "But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave... you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“Sometimes the crime follows the punishment, which only serves to prove the foresight of the Great God."
"That's what my grandmother used to say," said Brutha automatically.
"Indeed? I would like to know more about this formidable lady."
"She used to give me a thrashing every morning because I would certainly do something to deserve it during the day," said Brutha.
"A most complete understanding of the nature of mankind,”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods