History Quotes by Terry Pratchett

History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it

— Terry Pratchett

History tends to change people who think they're changing it.

— Terry Pratchett

History, contrary to popular theories, is kings and dates and battles.

— Terry Pratchett

“History needs shepherds, not butchers.”

— Terry Pratchett

People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.

— Terry Pratchett

“What is normal? Normal is yesterday and last week and last month taken together”

— Terry Pratchett

Now that their long war was over, they could get on with the proper concern of all civilised nations, which is to…

— Terry Pratchett

Around it are those countries which, according to History, constitute the civilised world ie, a world that can support historians

— Terry Pratchett

The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other.

— Terry Pratchett

History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.

— Terry Pratchett

The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap…

— Terry Pratchett

“History has to be observed. Otherwise it’s not history. It’s just … well, things happening one after another.”

— Terry Pratchett

“Once you were in the hands of a Grand Vizier, you were dead. Grand Viziers were always scheming megalomaniacs. It was probably…

— Terry Pratchett

It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military maneuvers, right down at the bottom end of the scale…

— Terry Pratchett

“But…history was full of the bones of good men who’d followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow.…

— Terry Pratchett

I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a…

— Terry Pratchett

“Things just happen, one after another. They don't care who knows. But history ... ah, history is different. History has to be…

— Terry Pratchett

Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by…

— Terry Pratchett

“According to the history books, the decisive battle that ended the Ankh-Morpork Civil War was fought between two handfuls of bone-weary men…

— Terry Pratchett

Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants - the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone…

— Terry Pratchett

“It would be a very accurate historian who could pinpoint the precise day when the Japanese changed from being fiendish automatons who…

— Terry Pratchett

“*The disc's greatest lovers were undoubtedly Mellius and Gretelina, whose pure, passionate and soul-searing affair would have scorched the pages of History…

— Terry Pratchett

History isn't like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit…

— Terry Pratchett

“Bill Door had carefully ensured a local reputation as the worst bowman in the entire history of toxophily; it had never occurred…

— Terry Pratchett

If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You've already read too much. Read other things; read westerns,…

— Terry Pratchett

“Mort thought that history was thrashing around like a steel hawser with the tension off, twanging backwards and forwards across reality in…

— Terry Pratchett

“It takes a long time for people like Vorbis to die. They leave echoes in history.”

— Terry Pratchett

“It wasn’t a bang or a boom. It was the dampest, most corpulent eruption in the history of terminal flatulence.”

— Terry Pratchett

Actors, said Granny, witheringly. As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more.

— Terry Pratchett

“It was destined to be the most impressive kiss in the history of foreplay. The kiss lasted more than fifteen years. Not…

— Terry Pratchett

It was, according to the history books, the fastest coronation since Bubric the Saxon crowned himself with a very pointy crown on…

— Terry Pratchett

People whose concept of ancient history is the first series of Star Trek may be treated with patience, because it's usually not…

— Terry Pratchett

“Not for the first time in the history of the universe, someone for whom communication normally came as effortlessly as a dream…

— Terry Pratchett

Oh, my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being re-examined and re-evaluated, otherwise how would we be able…

— Terry Pratchett

“it is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done. A person…

— Terry Pratchett

“where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed…

— Terry Pratchett

“It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done. A person…

— Terry Pratchett