Terry Pratchett Quotes

Truth: An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance …

This world may be only illusion -- but it's the only illusion we've got.

Like the physical, the psychical is not necessarily in reality what it appears to us to be.

From a distance it is something; and nearby it is nothing.

Did you ever think that maybe what you see isn't really what's true?

Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by everyday experience, which catches only the delusive appearance of things.

Generally, a lot of the things people think are made up are real, a lot of the things people think are real are made up, a lot of the things people think are spontaneous are cleverly faked, and a lot of the things people think are fake are spontaneous.

And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words... As if you had a meaning, as if you were a mere word, as if you were something that could be looked up in a dictionary. You are meaning.

The world is an illusion, but an illusion which we must take seriously.

Even if a man should chance to speak the most complete truth, yet he himself does not know it; all things are wrapped in appearances

"Well, it's no use your talking about waking him," said Tweedledum, "when you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real."

Life, what is it but a dream?

The whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment.

You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.

Watt's concern, deep as it appeared, was not after all what the figure was, in reality, but with what the figure appeared to be, in reality.

But we're lost in a world of appearances now.

It's lies. It's all lies. Some of them are just prettier than others, that's all. People see what they think is there.

I’m not anything that you think I am.

Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.

Perception of a state is not the state.

It isn't safe to sit in judgment upon another person's illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.

You can't see the world through a mirror.

You think the shadow is the substance.

I played with the image, because I think image is temporary. It's a projection. It's illusory.

Mind is the illusion that which is not but appears, and appears so much that you think that you are the mind.