Small Gods
Copyright © 1992 by Terry and Lyn Pratchett
(continued)
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Koomis theory was largely based on the good old Gnostic heresy, which tends to turn up all over the multiverse whenever men get up off their knees and start thinking for two minutes together, although the shock of the sudden altitude tends to mean the thinking is a little whacked.
| Topic: Heresy
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Words are the litmus paper of the mind. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word commence in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say Enter, dont stop to pack.
| Topic: Words
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The shepherd had a hundred sheep, and it might have been surprising that he was prepared to spend days searching for one sheep; in fact, it was because he was the kind of man prepared to spend days looking for a lost sheep that he had a hundred sheep.
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Only a mile away from the shepherd and his flock was a goatherd and his herd. The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different.
For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led.
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Vorbis could humble himself in prayer in a way that made the posturings of power-mad emperors look subservient.
| Topic: Humility
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Where there is punishment, there is always a crime, said Vorbis. Sometimes the crime follows the punishment, which only serves to prove the foresight of the Great God.
| Topic: Justice
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Winners never talk about glorious victories. Thats because theyre the ones who see what the battlefield looks like afterward. Its only the losers who have glorious victories.
| Topic: War
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One of the goddesses had been having some very serious trouble with her dress, Brutha noticed [...]
Petulia, Goddess of Negotiable Affection, said Om. Worshipped by the ladies of the night, and every other time as well, if you catch my meaning.
Bruthas mouth dropped open.
Theyve got a goddess for painted jezebels?
Why not? Very religious people I understand. Theyre used to being on theirthey spend so much time looking at thelook, belief is where you find it. Specialization.
| Topic: Prostitution
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Whats a philosopher? said Brutha.
Someone whos bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting, said a voice in his head.
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If you spend your whole time thinking about the universe, you tend to forget the less important bits of it. Like your pants.
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People think that professional soldiers think a lot about fighting, but serious professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are generally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time.
| Topics: Soldiering Professionalism
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Gods? said Xeno. We dont bother with gods. Huh. Relics of an outmoded belief system, gods.
There was a rumble of thunder from the clear evening sky.
Except for Blind Io the Thunder God, Xeno went on, his tone hardly changing.
| Topic: Gods
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Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, thatd happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasnt a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time . . .
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The Ephebians believed that every man should have the vote.* Every five years someone was elected to be Tyrant, provided he could prove that he was honest, intelligent, sensible, and trustworthy. Immediately after he was elected, of course, it was obvious to everyone that he was a criminal madman and totally out of touch with the view of the ordinary philosopher in the street looking for a towel. And then five years later they elected another one just like him, and really it was amazing how intelligent people kept on making the same mistakes.
* Provided that he wasnt poor, foreign, nor disqualified by reason of being mad, frivolous, or a woman.
| Topics: Democracy
Tyrants
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What is it you fear? he said. Here in your desert, with your . . . gods? Is it not that, deep in your souls, you know that your gods are as shifting as your sand?
Oh, yes, said the Tyrant. We know that. Thats always been a point in their favor. We know about sand. And your God is a rockand we know about rock.
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His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schoolsthe Cynics, the Stoics, and the Epicureansand summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, You cant trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and theres nothing you can do about it, so lets have a drink. Mines a double, if youre buying.
| Topic: Philosophy
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Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave, said Vorbis.
So I understand, said the Tyrant. I imagine that fish have no word for water.
| Topic: Slavery
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Books shouldnt be kept too close together, otherwise they interact in strange and unforeseeable ways.
| Topic: Books (general)
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Theres the Xenoists, said Urn promptly. They say the world is basically complex and random. And theres the Ibidians. They say the world is basically simple and follows certain fundamental rules.
And theres me, said Didactylos, pulling a scroll out of its rack.
Master says basically its a funny old world, said Urn.
And doesnt contain enough to drink, said Didactylos.
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We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork.
You mean you dont know its true? said Brutha.
I think it might be, said Didactylos. I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.
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If there was no truth, what was there left? And these bumbling old men spent their time kicking away the pillars of the world, and theyd nothing to replace them with but uncertainty. And they were proud of this?
| Topic: Uncertainty
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Oh, Im not talking about the poor bugger in the pit, said the philosopher. Im talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasnt them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wasnt them that they were throwing just as hard as they could.
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Brave man. He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.
| Topic: Courage
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Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.
| Compare to: Peter Brown
Topic: Belief
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Why should we trust him?
Anyone stupid enough to expect us to trust him in these circumstances must be trustworthy, said Didactylos. Hed be too stupid to be deceitful.
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He thought: the worst thing about Vorbis isnt that hes evil, but that that he makes good people do evil. He turns people into things like himself. You cant help it. You catch it off him.
| Topic: Evil
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Life in this world, he said, is, as it were, a sojourn in a cave. What can we know of reality? For all we see of the true nature of existence is, shall we say, no more than bewildering and amusing shadows cast upon the inner wall of the cave by the unseen blinding light of absolute truth, from which we may or may not deduce some glimmer of veracity, and we as troglodyte seekers of wisdom can only lift our voices to the unseen and say, humbly, Go on, do Deformed Rabbit . . . its my favorite.
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Gods are not very introspective. It has never been a survival trait. The ability to cajole, threaten, and terrify has always worked well enough. When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency toward quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellows-point-of-view is seldom necessary.
Which had led, across the multiverse, to men and women of tremendous brilliance and empathy devoting their entire lives to the service of deities who couldnt beat them at a quiet game of dominoes.
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The captain frowned. Its a funny thing, he said, but why is it that the heathens and the barbarians seem to have the best places to go when they die?
A bit of a poser, that, agreed the mate. I spose it makes up for em . . . enjoying themselves all the time when theyre alive, too? He looked puzzled. Now that he was dead, the whole thing sounded suspicious.
| Topics: The Afterlife Barbarism
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Gods didnt mind atheists, if they were deep, hot, fiery atheists like Simony, who spend their whole life not believing, spend their whole life hating gods for not existing. That sort of atheism was a rock. It was nearly belief . . .
| Topic: Atheism
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Just because you can explain it doesnt mean its not still a miracle.
| Topic: Miracles
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Theres no point in believing in things that exist.
Someones put up their hand, said Urn.
Yes?
Sir, surely only things that exist are worth believing in? said the enquirer [...]
If they exist, you dont have to believe in them, said Didactylos. They just are.
| Topic: Belief
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It is real. I dont know about truth. Truth is a lot more complicated than that.
| Topic: Truth
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You cant inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol.
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The desert becomes really interesting after the mushroom season.
Full of giant purple singing slugs? Talking pillars of flame? Exploding giraffes? That sort of thing? said Brutha carefully.
Good heavens, yes, said the saint. I dont know why. I think theyre attracted by the mushrooms.
| Topic: Drugs
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Hurting people because you enjoyed it . . . that was understandable. Vorbis just hurt people because hed decided that they should be hurt, without passion, even with a kind of hard love.
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Never been bishop or high panjandrum. Dangerous life. Always be man who cleans pews or sweeps up behind altar. No one bother useful man. No one bother small man. No one remember name.
| Topic: Advice
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Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum.
When you have their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.
| Topic: Translation
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We died for lies, for centuries we died for lies. He waved a hand towards the god. Now weve got a truth to die for!
No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for. [...] You can die for your country or your people or your family, but for a god you should live fully and busily, every day of a long life.
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Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?
Yes. Yes, of course.
Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.
| Compare to: T. S. Eliot
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This is Religion, Boy. Not Comparison Bloody Shopping! You Shall Not Subject Your God to Market Forces!
| Topic: Religion
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But theres no reason to fight!
Yes there is. Honor and revenge and duty and things like that.
Do you really think so? I thought philosophers were supposed to be logical?
Didactylos shrugged.
Well, the way I see it, logic is only a way of being ignorant by the numbers.
| Topic: Logic
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There the gods of the Discworld live.
At the least, any god who is anybody. And it is strange that, although it takes years of effort and work and scheming for a god to get there, once there they never seem to do a lot apart from drink too much and indulge in a little mild corruption. Many systems of government follow the same broad lines.
| Topic: Government
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Will you go to hell if you have a drop of spirit? he said.
So it seems, said Simony, absently. Then he noticed the flask. Oh, you mean alcohol?
| Topic: Hell
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There were one thousand, two hundred and eighty-three religious books in there now, each oneaccording to itselfthe only book any man need ever read. It was sort of nice to see them all together.
| Topic: Scripture
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text checked (see note T) Feb 2005; May 2011
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