‘No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for.' (SG)
'We died for lies, for centuries we died for lies.’ He waved a hand towards the god. ‘Now we’ve got a truth to die for!’
‘No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for.' (SG)
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It didn’t matter if you fooled yourself provided you didn’t let yourself know it, and did it well. (SG)
Brutha had never been any good at lying. The truth itself had always seemed so incomprehensible that complicating things even further had always been beyond him. (SG)
'But I read where she was the most beautiful –’
‘Ah well,’ said the sergeant. ‘If you’re going to go around reading -’ ‘The thing is,’ said Rincewind quickly, ‘it’s what they call dramatic necessity. No-one’s going to be interested in a war fought over a, a quite pleasant lady, moderately attractive in a good light. Are they?’ Eric was nearly in tears. ‘But it said her face launched a thousand ships -’ ‘That’s what you call metaphor,’said Rincewind. ‘Lying,’ the sergeant explained, kindly. (E) 'Oh, obvious,’said Granny. ‘I’ll grant you it’s obvious. Trouble is, just because things are obvious doesn’t mean they’re
true.' (WS) ... the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find. (S)
'Foolish child. All you could tell was that he thought he was telling the truth. The world isn’t always as people see it.' (ER)
Mention has already been made of an attempt to inject a little honesty into reporting on the Disc, and how poets and bards were banned on pain of - well, pain - from going on about babbling brooks and rosy-fingered dawn and could only say for example, that a face had launched a thousand ships if they were able to produce certified dockyard accounts. (LF)
The gates of the Assassins’ Guild were never shut. This was said to be because Death was open for business all the time, but it was really because the hinges had rusted centuries before and no-one had got
around to doing anything about it. (P) 'We all know what happens when a mysterious orphan turns up and challenges someone big and powerful, don’t we?
It’s like being the third and youngest son of a king. He can’t help but win!' She looked triumphantly at the crowd. But the crowd looked doubtful. They hadn’t read as many stories as Malicia, and were rather attached to the experience of real life, which is that when someone small and righteous takes on someone big and nasty he is grilled bread product, very quickly. (AM) ... the seeker after truth had found truths instead. The Third Journey of the Prophet Cena, for example, seemed remarkably like a retranslation of the Testament of Sand in the Laotan Book of the Whole. On one shelf alone he found forty-three remarkably similar accounts of a great flood, and in every single one of them a man very much like Bishop Horn had saved the elect of mankind by building a magical boat. Details varied of course. Sometimes the boat was made of wood, sometimes of banana leaves. Sometimes the news of the emerging dry land was brought by a swan,
sometimes by an iguana. Of course these stories in the chronicles of other religions were mere folktales and myth, while the voyage detailed in the Book of Cena was holy truth. But nevertheless. (CJ) The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn’t by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. (FC)
Being right doesn’t always work. (WFM)
It is a truth self evident that a man in possession of his own teeth, a decent pair of boots, a couple of acres of land and some pigs that need feeding must be in want of a wife. (NOC)
It wasn’t that witches were actually dishonest, but they were careful about what kind of truth they told. (W)
Never lie, but you don’t always have to be honest. (HFS)
'It's a far, far better thing I do now than I have ever done before,’ said Nobby.
‘Right,’ said Sergeant Colon. They walked on in silence for a while and he added: ‘O’ course, that’s not difficult.' (J) 'I’m not dependable. Even I don’t depend on me, and I’m me.' (TT)
'We’re bound to be truthful,’ she said. ‘But there’s no call to be honest.' (WS)
Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular. (WFM)
When you spend a large part of your life underground, you develop a very literal mind. Dwarfs have no use for metaphor and simile. Rocks are hard, the darkness is dark. Start messing around with descriptions like that and you’re in big trouble, is their motto. (GG)
YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME? (H)
HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
‘Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little -’ YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. ‘So we can believe the big ones?’ YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. ‘They’re not the same at all!’ YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. ‘Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point -’ MY POINT EXACTLY (H) ‘And these are your reasons, my Lord?’
‘Do you think I have others?’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent.’ Hughnon reflected that ‘entirely transparent’ meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn’t see them at all. (TT) ‘Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact,’ said Granny. (WS)
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