Terry Pratchett Quotes

What if 16th century people were right, and the supernatural and natural coexisted? How would that play out?

The Gods occupy the loftiest regions, men the lowest, the demons the middle region...They have immortality of body, but passions of the mind in common with men.

In culture after culture, people believe that the soul lives on after death, that rituals can change the physical world and divine the truth, and that illness and misfortune are caused and alleviated by spirits, ghosts, saints ... and gods.

I don't differentiate much, except in degree, between people who believe in religion from those who believe in astrology, magic or the supernatural.

Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition, and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when the works of our reason have passed away.

Raphael continued to stare at me, in no hurry to get started. "You know the best way to get rid of a demon, right?" He asked with a serious face. I caught Ivy rolling her eyes as I shook my head. "Exorcise alot!" Ivy caught my expression of dismay. "It's okay, Beth. He's famous for his bad jokes. We're still waiting for him to grow up." "And like Peter Pan, I hope to avoid that at all costs.

The world of gods and spirits is truly 'nothing but' the collective unconscious inside me.

Do I believe in ghosts? Of course I do. So do you. Deep in the souls of the most sophisticated of us is lurking a fear of the supernatural which all the discoveries of scientists cannot eradicate.

As those who believe in the visibility of ghosts can easily see them, so it is always easy to see repulsive qualities in those we despise and hate.

When we stop believing in the gods we can start believing in their stories.

I don't believe in hell and heaven anymore. Or angels. I think Islam is a superstition like every other superstition. But now because it's a superstition, unlike Christianity, that hasn't been tested and hasn't gone through a process of enlightenment, I think it's a dangerous superstition.

Do you believe then that the sciences would ever have arisen and become great if there had not before hand been magicians, alchemists, astrologers and wizards, who thirsted and hungered after abscondite and forbidden powers?

Forget what you might have heard. There are no separate corps of angels for agnostics, atheists, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists, Unitarians, Hindus, Druids, Shintoists, Wiccans, and so on. To put a spin on the old saying, it's okay if you don't believe in angels. We believe in you.

When I consider the Question, Whether there are such Persons in the World as those we call Witches? My Mind is divided between the two opposite Opinions; or rather I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it.

Those are shrines. Some people believe spirits live in them.

Why is monotheistic faith better than polytheistic? I mean, either you believe - if you believe in, like, a magic person who can do magic things, why is it different - so different if it's Superman or the Fantastic Four?

Magic [makes] possible today what science will make a reality tomorrow.

Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical.

If you hear an old parable and you don't believe it, it's mythology. If you hear an old parable and you believe it, it's religion.

Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.

...the word occult, despite conjuring images of devil worship, actually means ‘hidden’ or ‘obscured.’ In times of religious oppression, knowledge that was counterdoctrinal had to be kept hidden or ‘occult,’ and because the church felt threatened by this, they redefined anything ‘occult’ as evil, and the prejudice survived.

Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment.... The philosophy of atheism expresses the expansion and growth of the human mind. The philosophy of theism, if we can call it a philosophy, is static and fixed.

I really took it in-house. The Constantine character has a kind of flesh-and-blood practical look at things that would seem, other people would use the word, occult or spiritual. But here, demons are real. So for me it was more taking it from the film itself. I didn't really need to go outside the piece itself to inform me because the perspective on it, what the character does, was provided by the script.

The gods, my dear simple fellow, are a mere expression coined by vulgar superstition. We frown upon such coinage here.

Well, it had to be about the stories and the people who live under the volcano, what kind of new gods do they create? What sort of demons? And of course North Korea falls clearly into this category since the socialist revolution at the end of the Second World War. Somehow they adopted the myth of the power and dynamics of their volcano.