Quotes About Society

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

I have certainly noticed that groups of clever and intelligent people are capable of really stupid ideas.

They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.

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.

I think it's IMPOSSIBLE for anyone famous to come from here, because everyone around here is insane.

The aristocrats, if such they could be called, generally hated the whole concept of the train on the basis that it would encourage the lower classes to move about and not always be available.

The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery, whereas Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving.

And if you couldn't trust the government, who could you trust? Very nearly everyone, come to think of it...

Being a witch is a man's job: that's why it needs women to do it.

But she was too big to be a thief, too honest to be an assassin, too intelligent to be a wife, and too proud to enter the only other female profession generally available.

In Ankh-Morpork even the shit have a street to itself, said Detritus, awe and wonder in his voice. Truly, this a land of opportunity.

I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts, said Brutha. That way, everyone's happy.

The young man is also an idealist. He has yet to find out that what's in the public interest is not what the public is interested in.

the Ankh-Morpork Trespassers' Society was originally the Explorers' Society until Lord Vetinari forcibly insisted that most of the places 'discovered' by the society's members already had people in them, who were already trying to sell snakes to the newcomers.

Sometimes I dream that we could deal with the big crimes, that we could make a law for countries and not just for people

All around him people were eating their unfood wih, if not actual evidence of enjoyment, then with no more actual disgust than was to be found in burger chains all over the planet. He stood up, took his tray over to the PLEASE DISPOSE OF YOUR REFUSE WITH CARE receptacle, and dumped the whole thing. If you had told him that there were children starving in Africa he would have been flattered that you'd noticed.

It was funny how people were people everywhere you went, even if the people concerned weren't the people the people who made up the phrase people are people everywhere had traditionally thought of as people.

It will certainly show what our ancestors would be thinking if they were alive today. People have often speculated about this. Would they approve of modern society, they ask, would they marvel at present-day achievements? And of course this misses a fundamental point. What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: Why is it so dark in here?

A city like Ankh-Morpork was only two meals away from chaos at the best of times.

Newt had always suspected that people who regularly used the word community were using it in a very specific sense that excluded him and everyone he knew.

People were strange like that. Steal five dollars and you were a petty thief. Steal thousands of dollars and you were either a government or a hero.

Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are...well...human beings.

The plain old Sam Vimes had fought back. He got rid of most of the plumes and the stupid tights, and ended up with a dress uniform that at least looked as though its owner was male. But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armourers 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 armour. It was gilt by association.

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?