Quotes About Society

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

Insanity is catching.

Steal five dollars and you're a common thief. Steal thousands and you're either the government or a hero.

Real children do not go hoppity skip unless they are on drugs.

What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.

Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

Listen, Peaches, trickery is what humans are all about, said the voice of Maurice. They're so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them.

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.

Bursar? Yes, Archchancellor? You ain't a member of some secret society or somethin', are you? Me? No, Archchancellor. Then it'd be a damn good idea to take your underpants off your head.

Two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it.

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.

Ankh-Morpork! Pearl of cities! This is not a completely accurate description, of course — it was not round and shiny — but even its worst enemies would agree that if you had to liken Ankh-Morpork to anything, then it might as well be a piece of rubbish covered with the diseased secretions of a dying mollusc.

Ah, said Mr Pin. Right. I remember. You are concerned citizens. He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where 'traditional values' meant 'hang someone'.

Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.

It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.

but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?

The city's full of people who you just see around.

But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armorers had made a new gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it. Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armor. It was gilt by association.

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.

The girls were expected to grow up to be somebody's wife. They were also expected to read and write, those being considered soft indoor jobs that were too fiddly for the boys.

You are in favour of the common people?" said Dragon mildly. The common people?" said Vimes. "They're nothing special. They're no different from the rich and powerful except they've got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit. So I suppose I've got to be on their side.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

Anyway, why would you trust anything written down? She certainly didn't trust Mothers of Borogravia! and that was from the government. And if you couldn't trust the government, who could you trust? Very nearly everyone, come to think of it...

That's the way it was. Privilege, which just means 'private law.' Two types of people laugh at the law; those that break it and those that make it.