Lord Vetinari Quotes & Sayings

Lord Vetinari lifted an eyebrow with the care of one who, having found a piece of caterpillar in his salad, raises the rest of the lettuce. — Terry Pratchett

Persuasion comes in many forms," said Lord Vetinari. "No, I agree with Archchancellor Ridcully, sending Captain Carrot would be an excellent idea."
"What? Did I say something?" said Ridcully.
"Do you think that sending Captain Carrot would be an excellent idea?"
"What? Oh. Yes. Good lad. Keen. Got a sword."
"Then I agree with you," said Lord Vetinari, who knew how to work a committee. — Terry Pratchett

Why are our people going out there," said Mr. Boggis of the Thieves' Guild.
"Because they are showing a brisk pioneering spirit and seeking wealth and ... additional wealth in a new land," said Lord Vetinari.
"What's in it for the Klatchians?" said Lord Downey.
"Oh, they've gone out there because they are a bunch of unprincipled opportunists always ready to grab something for northern," said Lord Vetinari.
"A mastery summation, if I may say so, my lord," said Mr. Burleigh.
The Patrician looked down again at his notes. "Oh, I do beg your pardon, I seem to have read those last to sentences in the wrong order ... — Terry Pratchett

Moist waited. Lord Vetinari could outstare a statue and make even a statue start to feel nervous and confess. Moist's counter was a fetching grin, which he knew annoyed Vetinari beyond measure, and there was absolute silence in the Oblong Office while blank stare and cheery grin battled it out for supremacy in some other dimension. — Terry Pratchett

Rats had featured largely in the history of Ankh-Morpork. Shortly before the Patrician came to power there was a terrible plague of rats. The city council countered it by offering twenty pence for every rat tail. This did, for a week or two, reduce the number of rats - and then people were suddenly queing up with tails, the city treasury was being drained, and no one seemed to be doing much work. And there still seemed to be a lot of rats around. Lord Vetinari had listened carefully while the problem was explained, and had solved the thing with one memorable phrase which said a lot about him, about the folly of bounty offers, and about the natural instinct of Ankh-Morporkians in any situation involving money: Tax the rat farms. — Terry Pratchett

Lord Vetinari in a meeting: what people said was what they wanted him to hear. He paid a lot of attention to the spaces outside the words, though. That's where the things were that they hoped he didn't know and didn't want him to find out. — Terry Pratchett

No practical definition of freedom would be completely without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.
-Lord Havelock Vetinari- — Terry Pratchett

Music is breath of life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Mr. Lipwig, this morning you had no experience at all of being dead, and yet but for my intervention you would nevertheless have turned out to be extremely good at it," said Lord Vetinari sharply. "It just goes to show: you never know until you try. — Terry Pratchett

And these are your reasons, my lord?"
"Do you think I have others?" said Lord Vetinari. "My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent."
Hughnon reflected that 'entirely transparent' meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn't see them at all. — Terry Pratchett

My personal assessment is that Dr. King is the greatest American we have ever produced. I can argue for Lincoln, I can argue for FDR, but for my money, King is the greatest American we have ever produced. His only weapon was love. He transforms a nation, transforms the world with one weapon and that of course being again the weapon of love. So that for me, King is the quintessential example of everything that I could ever want to be in my lifetime. — Tavis Smiley

Everybody present laughed nervously, except Lord Vetinari, who just laughed. — Terry Pratchett

There's a limit to the power of a spring, no matter how tightly one winds it.'
'Oh, yes. Yes. And you hope that if you wind a spring one way, all its energies will unwind the other way. And sometimes you have to wind the spring as tight as it will go,' said Vetinari, 'and pray it doesn't break.'
His expression changed.
'Oh dear,' he said. He didn't thump the wall. I may have gone too far. — Terry Pratchett

Well," he said, trying to sound as though he found the whole thing a joke, "if you want to
er
what is it?" (He checked Percy's letter.) "Oh yeah
'sever ties' with me, I swear I won't get violent."
"Give it back," said Ron, holding out his hand. He is
" Ron said jerkily, tearing Percy's letter in half, "the world's"
he tore it into quarters
"biggest"
he tore it into eighths
"git." He threw the pieces into the fire. — J.K. Rowling

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. — Terry Pratchett

What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols. — Molly Ivins

Purpose provides activation energy for living. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Here lies the secret. Says Patanjali, the father of Yoga, "When a man rejects all the superhuman powers, then he attains to the cloud of virtue." He sees God. He becomes God and helps others to become the same. This is all I have to preach. Doctrines have been expounded enough. There are books by the million. Oh, for an ounce of practice! — Swami Vivekananda

As they stepped out into the silent street he wondered if Lord Vetinari had been right about the press. There was something ... compelling about it. It was like a dog that stared at you until you fed it. A slightly dangerous dog. Dog bites man, he thought. But that's not news. That's olds. — Terry Pratchett

The whole trouble is that we won't let God help us. — George MacDonald

Mission motto, sir," said Carrot cheerfully. "Morituri Nolumus Mori. Rincewind suggested it."
"I imagine he did," said Lord Vetinari, observing the wizard coldly. "And would you care to give us a colloquial translation, Mr Rincewind?"
"Er ... " Rincewind hesitated, but there really was no escape. "Er ... roughly speaking, it means, 'We who are about to die don't want to', sir. — Terry Pratchett

Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same thing as a monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari. — Terry Pratchett

1 cup milk plus: 1. Small bowl cold cereal + blueberries + yogurt 2. 1 egg, scrambled or boiled + 1 slice toast + strawberries 3. 1 cut-up chicken sausage + toast + ½ banana 4. ½ bagel + cream cheese + raspberries 5. 1 slice ham on toast + ½ orange 6. ½ tortilla rolled up with cheese + melon + yogurt 7. Small bowl oatmeal + cut-up bananas and strawberries Lunch and Dinner 1. 1 salmon cake + carrots + rice 2. Fish pie + broccoli 3. 3 oz salmon + cup of pasta + peas 4. 2 fish sticks + cup couscous + veg 5. ½ breast of chicken + veg + small potato 6. Roast chicken + dumplings + veg 7. 1 meat or peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich + apple + yogurt 8. 1 small homemade pizza + fruit 9. Pasta with tomato sauce and cheese + veg 10. Chicken risotto + veg 11. Ground beef + potato + peas 12. Small tuna pasta bake + veg 13. 4 meatballs + pasta + veg 14. Chicken stir-fry with veg + rice — Jo Frost

People sometimes rationalize their greed by saying that it is all for the good of their children but this is nothing but an excuse they use to make their despicable actions appear respectable and praiseworthy. — Democritus

I was merely endeavoring to indicate that if we do not grab events by the collar they will have us by the throat.
-Lord Vetinari — Terry Pratchett

I think somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me. — Andy Warhol

He shrugged. - They're just people - he said. - They're just doing what people do. Sir.
Lord Vetinari gave him a friendly smile.
- Of course, of course - he said. - You have to believe that, I appreciate. Otherwise you'd go quite mad. Otherwise you'd think you're standing on a feather-thin bridge over the vaults of Hell. Otherwise existence would be a dark agony and the only hope would be that there is no life after death. I quite understand. — Terry Pratchett

I must confess the activities of the UK governments for the past couple of years have been watched with frank admiration and amazement by Lord Vetinari. Outright theft as a policy had never occurred to him. — Terry Pratchett

Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, poked at the ink in his inkwell. There was ice in it.
"Don't you even have a proper fire?" said Hughnon Ridcully, High Priest of Blind Io and unofficial spokesman for the city's religious establishment. "I mean, I'm not one for stuffy rooms, but it's freezing in here!"
"Brisk, certainly," said Lord Vetinari. "It's odd, but the ice isn't as dark as the rest of the ink. What causes that, do you think?"
"Science, probably," said Hughnon vaguely. — Terry Pratchett

Any sensible ruler would have killed off Leonard, and Lord Vetinari was extremely sensible and often wondered why he had not done so. He'd decided that it was because, imprisoned in the priceless, inquiring amber of Leonard's massive mind, underneath that bright investigative genius was a kind of willful innocence that might in lesser men be called stupidity. It was the seat and soul of that force which, down the millennia, had caused mankind to stick its fingers in the electric light socket of the Universe and play with the switch to see what happened - and then be very surprised when it did. — Terry Pratchett

Suicide
How would I know I don't suffer any more, if I'm dead? — Roland Barthes

The tincture of night began to diffuse the soup of the afternoon.
Lord Vetinari considered the sentence, and found it good. He liked 'tincture' particularly. Tincture. Tincture. It was a distinguished word, and pleasantly countered by the flatness of 'soup'. Yes. In which may well be found the croutons of teatime. — Terry Pratchett

It's bad enough barging into Guild property, but we'll get into really serious trouble if we shoot anyone. Lord Vetinari won't stop at sarcasm. He might use' - Colon swallowed - 'irony. — Terry Pratchett

The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord."
Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one. — Terry Pratchett

Your excellency, if you persist in this attitude a complaint will go to your Lord Vetinari!"
"He does so look forward to them. — Terry Pratchett