Top 500 Terry Pratchett Quotes (2023 Update)

1. “So much universe, and so little time.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Space Quotes

2. “If you trust in yourself... and believe in your dreams... and follow your star... you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Motivational Quotes

3. “Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Funny Quotes

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

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Life Quotes

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

— Terry Pratchett

6. “In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”

— Terry Pratchett

7. “It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.”

— Terry Pratchett

8. “When in doubt, choose to live.”

— Terry Pratchett

9. “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”

— Terry Pratchett

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

— Terry Pratchett

11. “Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”

— Terry Pratchett

12. “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Change Quotes, Travel Quotes, Adventure Quotes

13. “And what would humans be without love? RARE, said Death.”

— Terry Pratchett

14. “Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.”

— Terry Pratchett

15. “Given enough coffee I could rule the world.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Coffee Quotes

16. “No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.”

— Terry Pratchett

17. “If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.”

— Terry Pratchett

18. “Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”

— Terry Pratchett

19. “They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Ignorance Quotes

20. “Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.”

— Terry Pratchett

21. “Even if it’s not your fault, it’s your responsibility.”

— Terry Pratchett

22. “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Firsts Quotes, Quotes About Stories

23. “Open your eyes and then open your eyes again.”

— Terry Pratchett

24. “Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Evil Quotes

25. “Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Real Quotes

26. “There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do.”

— Terry Pratchett

27. “The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.”

— Terry Pratchett

28. “Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.”

— Terry Pratchett

29. “You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?”

— Terry Pratchett

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

— Terry Pratchett

31. “Things just happen. What the hell.”

— Terry Pratchett

32. “Everything is a test.”

— Terry Pratchett

33. “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.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Fate Quotes

34. “Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.”

— Terry Pratchett

35. “Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

— Terry Pratchett

36. “A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”

— Terry Pratchett

37. “The harder I work, the luckier I become.”

— Terry Pratchett

38. “Education had been easy. Learning things had been harder.”

— Terry Pratchett

39. “It doesn’t stop being magic just because you know how it works.”

— Terry Pratchett

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

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Marriage Quotes

41. “It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Sadness Quotes

42. “Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Coffee Quotes, Rights Quotes

43. “Knowing how bad you could be is a great encouragement to being good.”

— Terry Pratchett

44. “Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Humor Quotes

45. “Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Science Quotes

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

— Terry Pratchett

47. “Of course I’m sane, when trees start talking to me, I don’t talk back.”

— Terry Pratchett

48. “The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.”

— Terry Pratchett

49. “This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.”

— Terry Pratchett

50. “People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.”

— Terry Pratchett

Featured in: Quotes About Stories