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It was often a good idea, Vimes had always found, to give the silly bits of the brain something to do, so that they did not interfere with the important ones which had a proper job to fulfil.
Get out in the world and let the world see you and it might find a new word in its vocabulary such as, perhaps, “wow!”
People have been winning and losing on the old roulette wheel of fate for thousands of years. I know that, but you know that I think that if you’re going to stop the wheel then you have to spare some thought for the poor buggers who’re sitting on zero.”
there are times when you should shut up and get some new ideas in that big fat head of yours rather than constantly reheating the old ones.
it’s true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they’re doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.
good people have no business being so bad. Goodness is about what you do. Not what you pray to.
‘How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be and, the and I and it, and so on, and there’s a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has already been done for you.’
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 .
he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.
I am certain of one thing and it’s this: the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Vimes didn’t like the phrase “The innocent have nothing to fear,” believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like “The innocent have nothing to fear”;
it’s quite easy for people to be jolly decent people when they can afford to hire thoroughly un-decent people, people that don’t even need orders, just a nod and a wink.”
His job was to make sense of the world, and there were times when he wished that the world would meet him halfway.
“It has been known, as people put it, for the leopard to change its shorts. All of us hope for a little redemption, whether if we deserve it or not.
