Best Vimes Quotes & Sayings

No! Please! I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" the man yelled.
"Really?" said Vimes. "What's the orbital velocity of the moon?"
"What?"
"Oh, you'd like something simpler? — Terry Pratchett

Nevertheless, it bothered Vimes, even though he'd got really good at the noises and would go up against any man in his rendition of the HRUUUGH! But is this a book for a city kid? When would he ever hear these noises? In the city, the only sound those animals would make was "sizzle." But the nursery was full of the conspiracy with bah-lambs and teddy bears and fluffy ducklings everywhere he looked.
One evening, after a trying day, he'd tried the Vimes street version:
Where's my daddy?
Is that my daddy?
He goes "Bugrit! Millennium hand and shrimp!"
He is Foul Ol' Ron!
No, that's not my daddy!
It had been going really well when Vimes heard a meaningful little cough from the doorway, wherein stood Sybil. Next day, Young Sam, with a child's unerring instinct for this sort of thing, said "Buglit!" to Purity. And that, although Sybil never raised the subject even when they were alone, was that. From then on Sam stuck rigidly to the authorized version. — Terry Pratchett

It's political, sir. Apparently he wants a return to the values and traditions that made the city great, sir."
"Does he _know_ what those values and traditions _were_?" said Vimes, aghast. — Terry Pratchett

Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erraticaly in all directions, that the chance of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme. — Terry Pratchett

The bestselling novel taking the Ankh-Morpork literary world by storm was dedicated to Commander Samuel Vimes.
The title of the book was Pride and Extreme Prejudice. — Terry Pratchett

Sybil's female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little gold chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons as made it back from endless little wars. The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel. — Terry Pratchett

Anyway, Angua seemed to have taken this case personally. She always had a soft spot for the underdog.
So did Vimes. You had to. Not because they were pure or noble, because they weren't. You had to be on the side of underdogs because they weren't overdogs. — Terry Pratchett

The little dragon turned on Vimes a gaze that would be guaranteed to win it the award for Dragon the Judges would Most Like to Take Home and Use as a Portable Gas Lighter. — Terry Pratchett

No swamp dragon could ever terrorise a kingdom, except by accident. Vimes wondered how many had been killed by enterprising heroes. It was terribly cruel to do something like that to creatures whose only crime was to blow themselves absent-mindedly to pieces in mid-air, which was not something any individual dragon made a habit of. A race of, of whittles, that's what dragons were. Born to lose. Live fast, die wide. — Terry Pratchett

There may be a lot of things I'm not good at, thought Vimes, but at least I don't treat the punctuation of a sentence like a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey ... — Terry Pratchett

The best man. You know? He hands you the ring and has to marry the bride if you ran away and so on. The Dean's been reading up on it, haven't you, Dean?"
"Oh, yes," said the Dean, who'd spent all the previous day with "Lady Deirdre Waggon's Book of Etiquette". "She's got to marry someone once she's turned up. You can't have unmarried brides flapping around the place, being a danger to society."
"I completely forgot about a best man!" said Vimes. — Terry Pratchett

You know what?' said Vimes aloud. 'This is going to be the world's first democratically killed dragon. One man, one stab.'
Then you've got to stop them. You can't let them kill it!' said Lady Ramkin.
Vimes blinked at her.
Pardon?' he said.
It's wounded!'
Lady, that was the intention, wasn't it? Anyway, it's only stunned,' said Vimes.
I mean you can't let them kill it like this,' said Lady Ramkin insistently. 'Poor thing!'
What do you want to do, then?' demanded Vimes, his temper unravelling. 'Give it a strengthening dose of tar oil and a nice comfy basket in front of the stove?'
It's butchery!'
Suits me fine!'
But it's a dragon! It's just doing what a dragon does! It never would have come here if people had left it alone!'
Vimes thought: it was about to eat her, and she can still think like this. He hesitated. Perhaps that did give you the right to an opinion ... — Terry Pratchett

Heroes get kingdoms and princesses, and they take regular exercise, and when they smile the light glints off their teeth, ting — Terry Pratchett

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. — Terry Pratchett

Vimes stuck his helmet under his arm, smoothed back his hair, and knocked. He'd considered asking Sargent Colon to accompany him, but had brushed the idea aside quickly. He couldn't have tolerated the sniggering. Anyway, what was there to be afraid of? He'd stared into the jaws of death three times; four, if you included telling Vetinari to shut up. — Terry Pratchett

And then you rushed off afterward because of that business with the barber in Gleam Street." "Sweeney Jones," said Vimes. "Well, he was killing people, Sybil. The best you could say is that he didn't mean to. He was just very bad at shaving - — Terry Pratchett

He's going to arrest the Patrician, Vimes told himself, the thought trickling through his brain like an icy rivulet. He's actually going to arrest the Patrician. The supreme ruler. He's going to arrest him. This is what he's actually going to do. The boy doesn't know the meaning of the word "fear." Oh, wouldn't it be a good idea if he knew the meaning of the word "survival" ... — Terry Pratchett

And then it arose and struck Vimes that, in her own special category, she was quite beautiful; this was the category of all the women, in his entire life, who had ever thought he was worth smiling at. She couldn't do worse, but then, he couldn't do better. So maybe it balanced out. She wasn't getting any younger but then, who was? And she had style and money and common-sense and self-assurance and all the things that he didn't, and she had opened her heart, and if you let her she could engulf you; the woman was a city. — Terry Pratchett

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. — Terry Pratchett

Once again he was aware of eyes staring fixedly at him. He glanced sideways into the long, pointed face of Goodboy Bindle Featherstone, rearing up in a pose best described as The Last Puppy in the Shop.
To his astonishment, he found himself reaching over and scratching it behind its ears, or at least behind the two spiky things at the sides of its head which were presumably its ears. It responded with a strange noise that sounded like a complicated blockage in a brewery. He took his hand away hurriedly.
"It's all right," said Lady Ramkin. "It's his stomachs rumbling. That means he likes you."
To his amazement, Vimes found that he was rather pleased about this. As far as he could recall, nothing in his life before had thought him worth a burp. — Terry Pratchett

The other two entered the room. Vimes gave his men his usual look of resigned dismay.
"My squad," he mumbled.
"Fine body of men," said Lady Ramkin. "The good old rank and file, eh?"
"The rank, anyway," said Vimes. — Terry Pratchett

Vimes had believed all his life that the Watch were called coppers because they carried copper badges, but no, said Carrot, it comes from the old word cappere, to capture. — Terry Pratchett

That's the Ankh-Morpork instinct, Vimes thought. Run away, and then stop and see if anything interesting is going to happen to other people. — Terry Pratchett

Who really knew what evil lurked in the heart of men?
ME.
Who knew what sane men were capable of?
STILL ME, I'M AFRAID.
Vimes glanced at the door of the last room. No, he wasn't going in there again. No wonder it stank here.
YOU CAN'T HEAR ME, CAN YOU? OH. I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT, said Death, and waited. — Terry Pratchett

Look down, your grace," said Skimmer. "Mhm, mhm."
Vimes realized he could feel the faintest prick of a knife blade on his stomach. "Look down further," he said.
Inigo looked down. He swallowed. Vimes had a knife, too. "You really are no gentleman, then," he said.
"Make a sudden move and neither are you," said Vimes. — Terry Pratchett

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness. — Terry Pratchett

They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today. — Terry Pratchett

The new captain looked up. Oh, good grief, Vimes thought. It's bloody Rust this time round!
And it was indeed the Hon. Ronald Rust, the god's gift to the enemy, any enemy, and a walking encouragement to desertion.
The Rust family had produced great soldiers, by the undemanding standards of 'Deduct your own casualties from those of the enemy, and if the answer is a positive number, it was a glorious victory' school of applied warfare. But Rust's lack of any kind of military grasp was matched only by his high opinion of the talent he in fact possessed only in negative amounts. — Terry Pratchett

How big a war?"
"A worse one than the one fifty years ago, I expect," said Cheery.
"I don't recall people talking about that one," said Vimes.
"Most humans didn't know about it," said Cheery. "It mostly took place underground. Undermining passages and digging invasion tunnels and so on. Perhaps a few houses fell into mysterious holes and people didn't get their coal, but that was about it."
"You mean dwarfs just try to collapse mines on other dwarfs?"
"Oh, yes."
"I thought you were all law-abiding?"
"Oh, yes, sir. Very law-abiding. Just not very merciful. — Terry Pratchett

Vimes had found Old Stoneface's journal in the Unseen University library. The man had been hard no doubt about that. But they were hard times. He'd written: "In the Fyres of Struggle let us bake New Men, who Will Notte heed the Old Lies." But the old lies had won in the end. — Terry Pratchett

Vimes looked a little deflated.
"You can't tell me as commander of police I can't stop some little ti-- some idiot from writing down anything he likes?"
"Oh, no, sir. Of course you can. But I'm not sure you can stop him from writing down that you stopped him writing things down," said Carrot. — Terry Pratchett

We're dealing here," said Vimes, "With a twisted mind."
"Oh, no! You think so?"
"Yes."
"But ... no ... you can't be right. Because Nobby was with us all the time."
"Not Nobby," said Vimes testily. "Whatever he might do to a dragon, I doubt if he'd make it explode. There's stranger people in this world than Corporal Nobbs, my lad."
Carrot's expression slid into a rictus of intrigued horror.
"Gosh," he said. — Terry Pratchett

Vimes felt a sudden surge of civic pride. There had to be something right about a citizenry which, when faced with catastrophe, thought about selling sausages to the participants. — Terry Pratchett

Do you realize we're very probably seeing something that no one has seen for centuries?"
"Yes, it's a bloody flying alligator setting fire to my city!" shouted Vimes. — Terry Pratchett

He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back.
He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body.
GOOD MORNING.
Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat.
'Are you Death?'
IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.
'I'm going to die?'
POSSIBLY.
'Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?'
OH, YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.
'What's that?'
I'M NOT SURE.
'That's very helpful. — Terry Pratchett

Vimes was already lost. Oh, there was the sun, but that was just a direction. He could feel it on the side of his face.
And the camel rocked from side to side. There was no real way of judging distance, except by haemorrhoids. — Terry Pratchett