Granny could shave the skin off a second. (W)
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'... if you go around telling people they are downtrodden, you tend to make two separate enemies: the people who are doing the downtreading and have no intention of stopping, and the people who are downtrodden...' (Do)
The Nac Mac Feegle would fight and steal, certainly, but who wanted to fight the weak and steal from the poor? (WFM)
Om was handily silent, thereby enabling his priests to interpret his wishes how they chose. Amazingly, Om’s wishes rarely translated into instructions like “Feed the poor” or “Help the elderly” but more along the lines of “You need a splendid residence” to “Why not have seven courses for dinner?” (SC)
‘Poor I don’t mind,’ said the Seriph. ‘It’s sobriety that is giving me difficulties.’ (S)
‘I’ve often wondered what being poor was like.’
‘You’re going to get a huge opportunity to find out.’ ‘Will I need training?’ ‘It comes naturally,’ said Rincewind. ‘You pick it up as you go along.’ (S) … if you wanted to be a successful urchin you needed to study how to urch. (Do)
… you didn't need to grind the faces of the poor if you taught them to do their own grinding. (ISWM)
… you could afford to buy beer or you could afford to buy paint and you couldn't drink paint unless you were Mr Johnson at number fourteen, who apparently drunk it all the time. (UA)
... if you worked in the vats it meant that, as far as the job market was concerned, you had been accelerating when you'd hit the bottom of the barrel and had been drilled into the bedrock. It meant that you no longer had enough charisma to be a beggar. It meant that you were on the run from something, possibly the gods themselves, or the demons inside you. It meant that if you dared look up you would see, high above you, the dregs of society. (UA)
In fact the Guild, he liked to think, practiced the ultimate democracy. You didn’t need intelligence, social position, beauty or charm to hire it. You just needed money which, unlike the other stuff, was available to everyone. Except for the poor, of course, but there was no helping some people. (H)
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness. (MA) 'Disgusting, really, her livin’ in a room like this. She’s got pots of money, sarge says, she’s got no call livin’ in ordinary rooms. What’s the good of not wanting to be poor if the rich are allowed to go round livin’ in ordinary rooms?' (GG)
Stories are not, on the whole, interested in swineherds who remain swineherds and poor and humble shoe-makers whose destiny is to die slightly poorer and much humbler. (WA)
'My late husband always said that the only way to make money out of poor people is by keeping them poor.' (MM)
'... they’re not so poor they can’t afford to do the right things!' (W)
When you got right down to the bottom of the ladder the rungs were very close together and, oh my, weren’t the women careful about them. In their own way, they were as haughty as any duchess. You might not have much, but you could have Standards. Clothes might be cheap and old but at least they could be scrubbed. There might be nothing behind the front door worth stealing but at least the doorstep could be clean enough to eat your dinner off, if you could’ve afforded dinner. (NW)
People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn’t true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people. (FC)
What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that? (FC)
Cockbill Street was where people lived who were worse than poor, because they didn’t know how poor they were. If you asked them they would probably say something like ‘mustn’t grumble’ or ‘there’s far worse off than us’ or ‘we’ve always kept uz heads above water and we don’t owe nobody nowt.’
He could here his granny speaking. ‘No one’s too poor to buy soap.’ Of course, many people were. But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride. (FC) 'It's only money.’
‘Yes, but it’s only my money, not only your money,’ Nanny pointed out. ‘We witches have always held everything in common, you know that,’ said Granny. ‘Well, yes,’said Nanny, and once again cut to the heart of the sociopolitical debate. ‘It’s easy to hold everything in common when no one’s got anything.' (Ma) But some did make it to the great melting pot called Ankh-Morpork. They arrived with no money– sailors charged what the market would bear, which was everything – but they had a mad gleam in their eye and they opened shops and restaurants and worked twenty-four hours a day. People called this the Ankh-Morpork Dream (of making piles of cash in a place where your death was unlikely to be a matter of public policy). And it was dreamed all the stronger by people who didn’t sleep. (IT)
'Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too, o’course.' (SG)
... when all people had was practically nothing, then anything could be almost everything. (WA)
He couldn’t help remembering how much he’d wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they’d been starving – anything with meat on it would have done. (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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