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Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.Terry Pratchett
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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
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The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish.Terry Pratchett
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We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork.Terry Pratchett
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But is all this true?" said Brutha.Didactylos shrugged. "Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork."" You mean you don't KNOW it's true?" said Brutha."I THINK it might be, " said Didactylos. "I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.Terry Pratchett
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Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.Terry Pratchett
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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
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Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.Terry Pratchett
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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
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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
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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
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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
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The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.Terry Pratchett
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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
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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
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It’s a popular fact that 90 percent of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. It is used. One of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary, to turn the unusual into the usual. Otherwise, human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing a stupid grin, saying “Wow, ” a lot. Part of the brain exists to stop this from happening.Terry Pratchett
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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
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There’s no point in believing in things that exist.Terry Pratchett
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Gods didn’t mind atheists, if they were deep, hot, fiery, atheists like Simony, who spend their whole life hating gods for not existing. That sort of atheism was a rock. It was nearly belief …Terry Pratchett
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Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.Terry Pratchett
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Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.Terry Pratchett
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He knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the ineffable wisdom and judgment of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually had to kill them before they saw the error of their ways...Terry Pratchett
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... a man needs no camel to ride to hell, yea, nor horse, nor mule; a man may ride into hell on his tongue...Terry Pratchett
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People said there had to be a Supreme Being because otherwise how could the universe exist, eh? And of course there clearly had to be, said Koomi, a Supreme Being. But since the universe was a bit of a mess, it was obvious that the Supreme Being hadn't in fact made it. If he had made it he would, being Supreme, have made a better job of it, with far better thought given, taking an example at random, to things like the design of the common nostril. Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. You only had to look around to see that there was room for improvement practically everywhere. This suggested that the Universe had probably been put together in a bit of a rush by an underling while the Supreme Being wasn't looking, in the same way that Boy Scouts' Association minutes are done on office photocopiers all over the country. So, reasoned Koomi, it was not a good idea to address any prayers to a Supreme Being. It would only attract his attention and might cause trouble.Terry Pratchett
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If Vorbis was right, and there was a kind of light that made darkness visible, then down there was its opposite, the darkness where no light could ever reach: darkness that blackened light, He thought of blind Didactylos and his empty lantern.Terry Pratchett
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Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.Terry Pratchett
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Furnishing was not a priority in the Citadel. Shelves, stools, tables... There was a rumor among the novices that priests towards the top of the hierarchy had golden furniture, but there was no sign of it here. The room was as severe as anything in the novices' quarters although it had, perhaps, a more opulent severity; it wasn't the forced bareness of poverty, but the starkness of intent.Terry Pratchett
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There was a hell for blasphemers. There was a hell for disputers of rightful authority. There were a number of hells for liars. There was probably a hell for little boys who wished their grandmothers were dead. There were more than enough hells to go around.Terry Pratchett
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Yes, but humans are more important than animals, ' said Brutha.'This is a point of view often expressed by humans, ' said Om.Terry Pratchett
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REMIND ME AGAIN, he said, HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES MOVE.Terry Pratchett
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It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys.Terry Pratchett
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Thou shalt not submit thy god to market forces.Terry Pratchett
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Om rubed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped off. We're like eagles up here, he thought. Sometimes we show tortoise how to fly. Then we let go.Terry Pratchett
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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!Terry Pratchett
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I know about sureness, ' said Didactylos. 'I remember, before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?'' It has to be done, ' Brutha mumbled. 'So the soul can be shriven and-'' Don't know about the soul. Never been that kind of philosopher, ' said Didactylos. 'All I know is, it was a horrible sight.'' The state of the body is not-'' Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit, ' said the philosopher. 'I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wan't them in the pit that they were throwing just as hard as they could.Terry Pratchett