Terry Pratchett: 50 best quotes

The wit and wisdom of the late and great Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett, whose science-fantasy Discworld novels are some of the best-selling works in English fiction around the world, died on March 12, 2015, aged 66 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. Pratchett sold more than 85 million books worldwide and was full of wit and wisdom. His final book The Shepherd’s Crown, completed last year, is published on August 27 2015. Here are 50 of his greatest quotations.

Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one

A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores

Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it

An education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on

The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head

Photo: John Lawrence

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 life

Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods. They have not forgotten this

The space between the young readers eyeballs and the printed page is a holy place and officialdom should trample all over it at their peril

"Educational" refers to the process, not the object. Although, come to think of it, some of my teachers could easily have been replaced by a cheeseburger

Dickens, as you know, never got round to starting his home page

I once absent-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce

I didn't go to university. Didn't even finish A-levels. But I have sympathy for those who did

Photo: Philip Hollis

It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp

Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people

It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done

Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom

Photo: BBC

Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry

Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom

Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: 'Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?'

The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues. —from Moving Pictures

It’s not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren’t doing it

People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it

I’d rather be a rising ape than a falling angel

If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn’t as cynical as real life

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.

The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it

It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done

There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this

The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks

Here’s some advice boy. Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they’re called revolutions

If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things

Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out

I'm not writing 'The A-Team' - if there's a fight going on, people will get hurt. Not letting this happen would be a betrayal

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along

Pets are always a help in times of stress. And in times of starvation, too, o'course

Captain Quirke was not actually a bad man; he didn’t have the imagination; but he dealt more in the generalised low-grade unpleasantness which slightly tarnishes the soul of all who come into contact with it – rather like British Rail

Goodness is about what you do. Not what you pray to

The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance

Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you

It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases - one was Alzheimer's, and the other was knowing I had Alzheimer's

I commend my soul to any God that can find it

So much universe, and so little time