... Vimes found it better to look at Authority for orders and then filter those orders through a fine mesh of common sense, adding a generous scoop of creative misunderstanding and maybe even incipient deafness if circumstances demanded, because Authority rarely descended to street level. (NW)
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'Things that are back to front are often easier to comprehend if they are upside down as well, said Lord Vetinari, tapping his chin with the silver knob of his can in an absent-minded way. 'In life as in politics.' (TT)
'.... I shouldn't think too much more about politics, it can only make you ill.' (Do)
That was their law. The strongest man led. That made sense. At least, it made sense to strong men. (N)
'They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today.' (FC)
Sometimes human beings are very much like bees. Bees are fiercely protective of their hive, provided you are outside it. Once you're in, the workers sort of assume that it must have been cleared by management and take no notice ... (GO)
Crowley liked the city in the early mornings. its population consisted almost entirely of people who had proper jobs to do and real reasons for being there, as opposed to the unnecessary millions who trailed in after 8 a.m. (GO)
Rincewind was not politically minded but there were some things he could work out not because they were to do with politics but because they had a lot to do with human nature. (IT)
He had formed the unusual opinion that the job of a king is to make the kingdom a better place for everyone to live in. (LL)
Vorbis liked to see properly guilty consciences. That was what consciences were for. Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned. (SG)
Give somebody a gold medallion and a big floppy hat and suddenly every speech becomes twice as long. It happens to headteachers too, I believe. (DCC)
‘Politicians only read books they have written, or those of colleagues they suspect might have mentioned them in their text.’ (JD)
Every scientific statement is provisional. Politicians hate this. How can anyone trust scientists? If new evidence comes along, they change their minds. (JD)
… it is the nature of Great Big Things that if the money isn’t spent on them, it isn’t spent on smaller scientific projects either. Small projects don’t advance bureaucratic or political careers as effectively as big ones. (JD)
'... our citizens must be protected, even from being dumb, which is not a crime. Good heavens, if it was, the jails would never be empty. Especially here in DC.' (LW)
'... although it's vexing to remember it, I am the King of my enemies as well as my friends. There's a certain noblesse oblige, see. It's a bad king who kills his subjects. I would rather see them humiliated than dead.' (RS)
'... bandits and governments 'ave so much in common that they might be interchangeable anywhere in the world ...' (RS)
... one wrong word from him would send shock-waves around the cavern and the result, whatever it was, would be his fault. Such is the fate of those who work only for the propagation of peace over warfare .... (RS)
'As a wizard I must tell you that words have power'.
'As a politician I must tell you I already know'. (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)
Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain calibre. (LC)
'Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is moo.' (J)
Like a busy government which only passes expensive laws prohibiting some new and interesting thing when people have actually found a way of doing it, the universe relied a great deal on things not being tried at all.
When something is tried, Ponder found, it often does turn out to be impossible very quickly, but it takes a little while for this to really be the case* – in effect, for the overworked laws of causality to hurry to the scene and pretend it has been impossible all along. *In the case of cold fusion, this was longer than usual. (LC) People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. (NW)
Now this he understood. He was never at ease with politics, where good and bad were just, apparently, two ways of looking at the same thing or, at least, were described like that by the people who were on the side Vimes thought of as ‘bad’.
It was all too complicated and, where it was complicated, it meant that someone was trying to fool you. But on the street, in hot pursuit, it was all so clear. Someone was going to be still standing at the end of the chase, and all you had to concentrate on was making sure it was you. (FE) |
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