David

“There were plotters, there was no doubt about it. Some had been ordinary people who'd had enough. Some were young people with no money who objected to the fact that the world was run by old people who were rich. Some were in it to get girls. And some had been idiots as mad as Swing, with a view of the world just as rigid and unreal, who were on the side of what they called 'the people'. Vimes had spent his life on the streets, and had met decent men and fools and people who'd steal a penny from a blind beggar and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he'd never met The People.

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up. What would run through the streets soon enough wouldn't be a revolution or a riot. It'd be people who were frightened and panicking. It was what happened when the machinery of city life faltered, the wheels stopped turning and all the little rules broke down. And when that happened, humans were worse than sheep. Sheep just ran; they didn't try to bite the sheep next to them.”
― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

“In the broadest sense, it was used morally to denote a contrast between “superior moral and intellectual” urban societies that conformed to Eurocentric ideals, and more “barbaric” ones that did not have a hierarchy system, agriculture, literature, art and science, or a division of labour.”
― Raven Todd DaSilva, The Other Ancient Civilizations: Decoding Archaeology's Less Celebrated Cultures

“Mistress Weatherwax is the head witch, then, is she?’
'Oh no!’ said Miss Level, looking shocked. 'Witches are all equal. We don’t have things like head witches. That’s quite against the spirit of witchcraft.’
'Oh, I see,’ said Tiffany.
'Besides,’ Miss Level added, 'Mistress Weatherwax would never allow that sort of thing.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Everything in life that’s any fun, as somebody wisely observed, is either immoral, illegal or fattening.”
― P.G. Wodehouse