Feet of Clay (Discworld, #19; City Watch, #3)

by Terry Pratchett

“It beats me why Ankh-Morpork wants to celebrate the fact it had a civil war three hundred years ago,” said Angua, coming back to the here-and-now. “Why not? We won,” said Carrot. “Yes, but you lost, too.”

Stupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplate . . .

Rumor is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors and windows—sometimes it doesn’t even need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips.

“Right. He’s untrustworthy, and so we don’t trust him. So that’s all right. But I’ve seen him revive a horse when everyone else said it was fit only for the knackers. Horse doctors have to get results, Fred.” And that was true enough: When a human doctor, after much bleeding and cupping, finds that a patient has died out of sheer desperation, he can always say, “Dear me, will of the gods, that will be thirty dollars please,” and walk away a free man. This is because human beings are not, technically, worth anything. A good racehorse, on the other hand, may be worth twenty thousand dollars. A doctor who lets one hurry off too soon to that great big paddock in the sky may well expect to hear, out of some dark alley, a voice saying something on the lines of “Mr. Chrysoprase is very upset,” and find the brief remainder of his life full of incident.

“They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today.”

Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.

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.

Best

He’d written: “In the Fyres of Struggle let us bake New Men, who Will Notte heed the Old Lies.” But the old lies had won in the end. He said to people: you’re free. And they said hooray, and then he showed them what freedom costs and they called him a tyrant and, as soon as he’d been betrayed, they milled around a bit like barn-bred chickens who’ve seen the big world outside for the first time, and then they went back into the warm and shut the door—

But the man stayed alive by always arranging matters so that a future without him represented a riskier business than a future with him still upright. The only people, therefore, who’d risk killing him were madmen—and

In a way, it didn’t matter who they were. In fact, their anonymity was part of the whole business. They thought themselves part of the march of history, the tide of progress and the wave of the future. They were men who felt that The Time Had Come. Regimes can survive barbarian hordes, crazed terrorists and hooded secret societies, but they’re in real trouble when prosperous and anonymous men sit around a big table and think thoughts like that.

Relatability factor 20000%

“We’re all lyin’ in the gutter, Fred. But some of us’re lookin’ at the stars . . .”

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.

It sometimes worried Vimes, the way he suspected everything. If you started wondering whether a man could be poisoned by words, you might as well accuse the wallpaper of driving him mad.

People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn’t true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people.

Wee Mad Arthur walked back to his task, shaking his head. He worked for nothing and sold his rats for half the official rate, a heinous crime. Yet Wee Mad Arthur was growing rich because the guild hadn’t got its joint heads around the idea of fiscal relativity. Arthur charged a lot more for his services. A lot more, that is, from the specialized and above all low point of view of Wee Mad Arthur. What Ankh-Morpork had yet to understand was that the smaller you are, the more your money is worth.

you all had such hopes. But the words in your head’ll defeat you every time . . .”

“The big trouble,” he added, “is that everyone wants someone else to read their minds for them and then make the world work properly. Even golems, perhaps.”

What is it I’m always telling you?” “Er . . . er . . . Never trust anybody, sir?” “No, not that.” “Er . . . er . . . Everyone’s guilty of something, sir?” “Not that, either.” “Er . . . er . . . Just because someone’s a member of an ethnic minority doesn’t mean they’re not a nasty small-minded little jerk, sir?”

Favorite

“We don’t look at the light because the light is what we look with,”

Only crimes could take place in darkness. Punishment had to be done in the light.

Amazing

“Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you.” “Sir?” “It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you are Authority.” “Sir?” “That’s practically Zen.”

“Did you really punch the president of the Assassins’ Guild?” “Yes, sir.” “Why?” “Didn’t have a dagger, sir.”

“What Better Work For One Who Loves Freedom Than The Job Of Watchman? Law Is The Servant of Freedom. Freedom Without Limits Is Just A Word,”