'No civil police force could hold out against an irate and resolute population. The trick is not to let them realize that.' (UA)
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'We play and are played and the best we can hope for is to do it with style.' (UA)
… authority must back up authority, in public at least, otherwise there is no authority, and therefore the senior authority is forced to back up the junior authority, even if he, the senior authority, believes the junior authority is a tiresome little tit. (UA)
'…what the wise man cannot change he must channel.' (UA)
They had learned over the years that the top was not a happy or safe place to be. One rung down, that was the place for a sensible man. You advised the king, you had a lot of power, in a quiet kind of way, and you didn't get murdered anything like as often. (N)
Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word ‘commence’ in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say ‘Enter’, don’t stop to pack. (SG)
Ladies Who Organize are seldom thrown by guests arriving unexpectedly early. (Th)
They all seemed to have names likes Bunny or Bubbles, they kept in touch meticulously, they’d all married influential and powerful men, they all hugged one another when they met and went on about the good old days in Form 3b or whatever, and if they acted together, they could probably run the world or, it occurred to Vimes, might already be doing so.
They were Ladies Who Organize. (Th) the magic of wizards, the magic of witches did not usually involve the application of much raw power. The difference is between hammers and levers. Witches generally tried to find the small point where a little changes made a lot of result. To make an avalanche you can either shake the mountain, or maybe you can just find exactly the right place to drop a snowflake. (SLF)
'Learnin’ how not to do things is as hard as learning how to do them. Harder, maybe. There’d be a sight more frogs in this world if I didn’t know how not to turn people into them.' (HFS)
Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain calibre. (LC)
'Hit a man too hard and you can only rob him once; hit him just hard enough and you can rob him every week.' (IT)
'Nothing has to happen. You can let things happen. But that’s not the same.' (CP)
'Everyone needs their little dreams.’ Maurice truly believed that, too. If you knew what it was that people, really, really wanted, you very nearly controlled them. (AM)
... you found that what you really wanted was power and there were much politer ways of getting it. And then you realized that power was a bauble. Any thug had power. The true prize was control. Lord Vetinari knew that. When heavy weights were balanced on the scales, the trick was to know where to place your thumb.
And all control started with the self. (FE) One of the hardest lessons of young Sam’s life had been finding out that the people in charge weren’t in charge.
It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people make instead of thinking. (NW) ... it is possible, after a while, to develop certain dangerous habits of thought. One is that, while all important enterprises need careful organization, it is the organization that needs organizing, rather than the enterprise. And the other is that tranquility is always a good thing. (TOT)
Not doing any magic at all was the chief task of wizards – not ‘not doing magic’ because they couldn’t do magic, but not doing magic when they could and didn’t. Any ignorant fool can fail to turn someone else into a frog. You have to be clever to refrain from doing it when you know how easy it is. There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn’t been quite as clever as that, and on many of them the grass would never grow again. (GP)
He wasn't the leader. He'd have liked to be a leader. A leader could stick his chin out and do brave things. What Masklin had to do was argue and persuade and, sometimes, lie very slightly. He found it was often easier to get people to do things if you let them think it was their idea. (Dig)
'… after you’ve learned to shout you have to learn not too!' (AM)
The important thing, she decided, was to stay calm. There was always a logical explanation for everything, even if you had to make it up. (SM)
He knew that the way to make people do what you wanted was to make them think it was their idea. If there was one thing that got right up a nome's nose, it was someone saying, 'Here is a really sensible idea. Why are you too stupid to understand?'
It wasn't that people were stupid. It was just that people were people. (Dig) '... theyre finding out what being human really means.’
'Which is?’ ‘That you’re not as much in control as you think.' (TOT) Human nature, the Patrician always said, was a marvellous thing. Once you understood where its levers were. (GG)
'... the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you’re good at that, I’ll grant
you. But the trouble is that it’s the only thing you’re good at. One day it’s the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it’s everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was over-thrown no-one’s been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It’s part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world.' (GG) |
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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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