Jingo

“It was much better to imagine men in some smokey room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told the children bed time stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, then what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.” – Jingo, Terry Pratchett

While a stunningly apporopriate passage for our current state of affairs, I believe the quote in question does well enough without that context. It paints a sardonic picture of an easier to understand world, and follows it with a bleak truth; that we as a people are largely responsible for allowing things to go as far as they do, to get as bad as they do. That he manages to make such a disturbing revelation sound almost funny, is a testament to the sharp mind of Terry Pratchett.

“Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.” – Jingo, Terry Pratchett

A common refrain, put in a pretty way. People are afraid of the unkown, of the infinite possibilites of life and the concepts that brought it about. Given the option, many people choose to block these thoughts entirely.

Small Gods

“His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools — the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans — and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, ‘You can’t trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s have a drink.” – Small Gods, Terry Pratchett

I have found value in these various views on life at some point or another over the course of my own, and to see them so summarily laid out in a single clever sentence brings me a not insignificant amount of joy.

Good Omens

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.” – Good Omens, Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaimen

This is just too damn funny, and too damn accurate to pass up.