Jingo (Discworld, #21)

by Terry Pratchett

The Curious Squid were very small, harmless, difficult to find and reckoned by connoisseurs to have the foulest taste of any creature in the world. This made them very much in demand in a certain kind of restaurant where highly skilled chefs made, with great care, dishes containing no trace of the squid whatsoever.

As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus.

‘Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is moo.’

I said I’d like to start a club for the street kids and he said it was fine provided I took them camping on the edge of some really sheer cliff somewhere in a high wind.

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.

The Prince was a tall man who had probably once been quite athletic until the big dinners had finally weighed him down.

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.

‘Nobby, you was always on the winning side, the reason bein’, you used to lurk aroun’ the edges to see who was winning and then pull the right uniform off’f some poor dead sod. I used to hear where the generals kept an eye on what you were wearin’ so they’d know how the battle was going.’

Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobbs had gone on patrol. They weren’t sure why they were patrolling, and what they were supposed to do if they saw a crime, although many years of training had enabled them not to see some quite large crimes. But they were creatures of habit. They were watchmen, so they patrolled. They didn’t patrol with a purpose. They patrolled, as it were, in pure essence.

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, 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.

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.’

71-hour Ahmed was not superstitious. He was substitious, which put him in a minority among humans. He didn’t believe in the things everyone believed in but which nevertheless weren’t true. He believed instead in the things that were true in which no one else believed. There are many such substitions, ranging from ‘It’ll get better if you don’t pick at it’ all the way up to ‘Sometimes things just happen.’

The sudden appearance of a naked woman always caused a rethink of anyone’s immediate plans.

“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.”

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.

Soon, the desert was filled with the buzz and click and screech of creatures which, lacking mankind’s superior brainpower, did not concern themselves with finding someone to blame and instead tried to find someone to eat.

‘I’ve only been a woman ten minutes and already I hate you male bastards.’

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