Daniel

“A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn’t really need to practice anymore because they had got so good at it. City law said that only condemned criminals should be used, but that was all
right because in most of the religions refusing to volunteer for sacrifice was an offense punishable by death.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“I'm afraid they're not very well-designed creatures, dragons."
Vimes listened.
"They would never have survived at all except that their home swamps were isolated and short of predators. Not that a dragon made good eating,
anyway-once you'd taken away the leathery skin and the enormous flight muscles, what was left must have been like biting into a badly-run chemical factory. No wonder dragons were always ill. They relied on permanent stomach trouble for supplies of fuel. Most of their brain power was taken up with controlling the complexities of then-digestion, which could distill flame-producing fuels from the most unlikely ingredients. They could even rearrange their internal plumbing overnight to deal with difficult processes. They lived on a chemical knife-edge the whole time. One misplaced hiccup and they were geography.
And when it came to choosing nesting sites, the females had all the common sense and mothering instinct of a brick."
Vimes wondered why people had been so worried about dragons in the olden days. If there was one in a cave near you, all you had to do was wait until it self-ignited, blew itself up, or died of acute indigestion.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“You killed a sentry, you know that?"

"I guessed I had...What do they expect if they mount such a damn stupid operation? Why didn't they pull us both in at once? Why put all the lights out? If anything was over organized, that was."

"I am afraid that as a nation we tend to over organize. Abroad that passes for efficiency.”
― John le Carré, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

“Well, sir,” he said, “I know that dragons have been extinct for thousands of years, sir—”
“Yes?” The Patrician’s eyes narrowed.
Vimes plunged on. “But, sir, the thing is, do they know? Sergeant Colon said he heard a leathery
sound just before, just before, just before the, er…offense.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!