‘I wish people would not be so careless about what they believe.’ (MR)
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‘Sooner or later every curse is a prayer.’ (W)
.... Boffo thinking - the rumours and the stories. Miss Treason had power because they thought she did. (W)
Like many professionally religious people - and they were pretty professional, being gods - they tended towards unease in the presence of the unashamedly spiritual. (LH)
'... but that's what true faith would mean, y'see? Sacrificin' your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin' the truth of it, workin' for it, breathin' the soul of it. That's religion. Anything else is just ... is just bein' nice. And a way of keepin' in touch with the neighbours.' (CJ)
Belief is a wonderful thing for those who need it .... (Wings)
People who would not believe a High Priest if he said the sky was blue, and was able to produce signed affidavits to this effect from his white-haired old mother and three Vestal virgins, would trust just about anything whispered darkly behind their hand by a complete stranger in a pub. (Ma)
'I have faith.'
REALLY? IN WHAT PARTICULAR DEITY? 'Oh, none of them.' THEN FAITH IN WHAT? 'Just faith, you know. In general.' (Ma) … when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it’s nice to be able to blaspheme. (MA)
If people don’t respect then they won’t fear; and if they don’t fear, how can you get them to believe? (SG)
He envied his fellow students who believed in gods that were intangible and lived a long way away on top of some mountain. A fellow could really believe in gods like that. But it was extremely hard to believe in a god when you saw him at breakfast every day. (P)
'They think you have just arrived.'
'Well, that's true.' 'Not arrive here. Arrived on the planet. Arrived from the stars.' 'But we've been here for thousands of years. We live here!' 'Humans find it a lot easier to really believe in little people from the sky than little people from the Earth. They would prefer to think of little green men than leprechauns.' (Wings) It occurred to Johnny, not for the first time, that the human mind, of which each of his friends was in possession of one almost standard sample, was like a compass. No matter how much you shook it up, no matter what happened to it, sooner or later it'd carry on pointing the same way. If three-metre-tall Martians landed on the shopping mall, bought some greeting cards and a bag of sugar cookies and then took off again, within a day or two people would believe it never happened. (JD)
… he’d thought a wild surmise was some kind of exotic bird. Well, he was now looking out over new worlds with somewhat of a tame surmise. (LE)
… a man could be dogmatic, and that was all right, or he could be stupid, and no harm done, but stupid and dogmatic at the same time was too much … (UA)
Belief is a hard thing to believe … (N)
That's what gods are! An answer that will do! (N)
He believed in rational thinking and scientific inquiry, which was why he never won an argument with his mother, who believed in people doing what she told them, and believed it with a rock-hard certainty which dismissed all opposition. (N)
Granny Weatherwax did not believe in atmospheres. She did not believe in psychic auras. Being a witch, she’d always thought, depended more on what you didn’t believe. (WA)
'Sounds a bit unbelievable to me,’ said Glurk.
‘Oh, yes. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.' (CP) 'I was being persecuted for my beliefs.’
‘That’s terrible,’ said Teppic. Khuft spat. ‘Damn right. I believed people wouldn’t notice I’d sold them camels with plaster teeth until I was well out of town.' (P) ... Granny Weatherwax believed in cups of tea, dry biscuits, washing every morning in cold water and, well, she believed mostly in Granny Weatherwax. (W)
Building a temple didn’t mean you believed in gods, it just meant you believed in architecture. (MM)
... the tradition of burying a shepherd with a piece of raw wool in the coffin was true, too. Even gods understand that a shepherd can’t neglect the sheep. A god who didn’t understand would not be worth believing in. (WFM)
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The world has lost Sir Terry, and it's so much the poorer for that. Vale Sir Terry. Categories
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