Thread by @TheOperaGeek

"There were times when the world did not need policemen, because what it really did need was for somebody who knew what they were doing to shut it all down and start it all up again so that THIS time it could be done properly."

- Terry Pratchett, Snuff

#Discworld

"...but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?"

- Terry Pratchett, Snuff

"I'm not a natural killer! See this? See what it says? I'm supposed to KEEP the peace, I am! If I kill people to do it, I'm reading the wrong manual!"
- Watch Commander Sam Vimes on policing
(Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

"He asked you to shoot at people who weren’t shooting back,” growled Vimes, striding forward.

[...] “They are throwing STONES, Sarge,” said Colon.

“So? Stay out of range. They’ll get tired before we do." "

-Sam Vimes on policing, again. (Terry Pratchett, Night Watch)

"No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses."
- Terry Pratchett, THUD!

#Discworld

"And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say “we’re the good guys” and do bad-guy things."
- Vimes on policing & excuses, part three.
(Terry Pratchett, THUD!)

#Discworld

"For the enemy is not Troll, nor it is Dwarf, but it is the baleful, the malign, the cowardly, the vessels of hatred, those who do a bad thing and call it good."

-Terry Pratchett, THUD!

#Discworld

#Discworld

"But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality."
- The Dragon on human nature, part two
(Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards)

"There were people who’d steal money from people. Fair
enough. That was just theft.

But there were people who, with
one easy word, would steal the humanity from people. That
was something else."

- Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
#Discworld

"And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be
living in a slum, for SOME reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions."
- Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

"You couldn't say 'I had orders.' You couldn't say 'It's not fair.' No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself. [...]

Not 'Thou Shalt Not'.

Say 'I WILL NOT'."

-Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay

"WORDS IN THE HEART CANNOT BE TAKEN."

- Dorfl the golem (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay)

....i really didn't mean for this to become a whole thread. I have more. Many more. Things that express my feelings better than I could ever say them.

But that is enough boring you all...for now. I should go eat before Tanya yells at me

#OperaGeek #Discworld

Ok im back i haven't eaten but it's cooking so no one can yell at me

Here are a few more. These are all things I know by heart at this point or have saved on my phone already...eep.

#OperaGeek #Discworld

"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

"'...tomorrow the sun will come up again, & I'm pretty sure that whatever happens we won't have found Freedom, & there won't be a whole lot of Justice, & I'm damn sure we won't have found Truth. But it's possible that I might get a hard-boiled egg.
-Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

"You took an oath to uphold the law and defend the citizens without fear or favor, and to protect the innocent. That's all they put in. [...] Nothing in there about orders. You're an officer of the law, not a soldier of the government."
- Vimes on policing, again. (Night Watch)

"That's the way it was. Privilege, which just means 'private law.' Two types of people laugh at the law; those that break it and those that make it."
- Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

"Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to. And the worst thing you can do is nothing."
- Terry Pratchett, Snuff

"Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but EVEN MORE from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear'."
- Terry Pratchett, Snuff

"… you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong."
- Terry Pratchett, Snuff

The jurisdiction of a good man extends to the end of the world.
- Terry Pratchett, Snuff

"Don't start weaving a social hypothesis in front of an angry woman holding a blade."
- Snuff

(ok I admit that one I just like because it's true, not necessarily profound)

"The hated have no reason to love."

- Terry Pratchett, Snuff

"There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do."

- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

"Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."
- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods