Home > Work > Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4) QUOTES

Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4) QUOTES

1 " Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

2 " Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

3 " Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

4 " Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

5 " The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

6 " It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

7 " It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

8 " Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight! "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

9 " History was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

10 " Oh, my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being re-examined and re-evaluated, otherwise how would we be able to keep historians occupied? We can't possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

11 " It was much better to imagine men in some smokey room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told the children bed time stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

12 " After all, when you seek advice from someone it's certainly not because you want them to give it. You just want them to be there while you talk to yourself. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

13 " Look, sir, I know Angua. She's not the useless type. She doesn't stand there and scream helplessly. She makes other people do that. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

14 " Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum amount of moo. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

15 " Any sensible ruler would have killed off Leonard, and Lord Vetinari was extremely sensible and often wondered why he had not done so. He'd decided that it was because, imprisoned in the priceless, inquiring amber of Leonard's massive mind, underneath that bright investigative genius was a kind of willful innocence that might in lesser men be called stupidity. It was the seat and soul of that force which, down the millennia, had caused mankind to stick its fingers in the electric light socket of the Universe and play with the switch to see what happened - and then be very surprised when it did. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

16 " Odd thing, ain't it... you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

17 " Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He’d been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

18 " It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

19 " The Librarian shyly held out a small, battered green book. Vimes had been expecting something bigger, but he took it anyway. It paid to look at any book the orangutan gave you. He matched you up to books. Vimes supposed it was a knack, in the same way that an undertaker was very good at judging heights. "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)

20 " Sometimes I dream that we could deal with the big crimes, that we could make a law for countries and not just for people, "

― Terry Pratchett , Jingo (Discworld, #21; City Watch, #4)