Terry Pratchett Quotes

You can't exist in this world without leaving a piece of yourself behind.

You never quite know what you do in life that leaves a seed behind that grows into an oak tree.

There's one form of immortality I like to think about. It's that all those who from the very first have given anything to the world are living in the world to-day.

What will the world be quite overturned when you die?

No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.

In terms of effect on the world, it's very good that I've lived. And so I guess, if I could go back in time and prevent my birth, I wouldn't do it. But I sure wish I hadn't had so much pain.

Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains even a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead. And he thought, “It’s a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man’s life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.

I think what I've tried to do is make the world a better place. I think that's what's really important. Nobody remembers who sold the most togas in Rome. In terms of legacy, people remember the great villains more than they remember the great heroes. So I think how you feel about yourself is the most significant question. What do you say about yourself when you put your head on the pillow? Are you really proud of what you're doing and the way you're doing it? I think it's really a fundamental question.

I hope that I have given happiness to others. I hope I have given children to the world, and that I have made some kind of a mark for myself here.

In the Ramtops village where they dance the real Morris dance, for example, they believe that no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence.

Kind words and good deeds are eternal. You never know where their influence will end.

If your life lease, your existence was canceled tomorrow, what would you wish you had done? What are the things you would like to impact? Start on those and you can change the world. Maybe you can only make your neighborhood a little bit better, or make someone's life a little bit better. Isn't that the kind of purpose?

The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality.

I don’t want my thoughts to die with me, I want to have done something. I’m not interested in power, or piles of money. I want to leave something behind. I want to make a positive contribution - know that my life has meaning.

Nobody lives forever, but we all shine on.

I don't expect to live forever, nor do I repine over that, but I am weak enough to want to be remembered forever. - Yet how few of those who have lived, even of those who have accomplished far more than I have, linger on in world memory for even a single century after death

The generations of men run on in the tide of time, but leave their destined lineaments permanent for ever and ever.

Whether you like it or not, you will leave a leadership legacy.

I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, then do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.

It is grievous for a man to leave behind him a shadow in his own shape.

She liked to imagine that when she passed the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was.

If I wanted to order a ring for myself, the inscription I should choose would be: "Nothing passes away." I believe that nothing passes away without leaving a trace, and that every step we take, however small, has significance for our present and our future existence.

One day, tens of millions of years from now, someone will find me rusted into the mud of a world they have never seen, and when they crumble me between their fingers, it will be you they find.

To leave the world richer—that is the ultimate success.

Things happen the way they happen because the world is the way it is.