The Infinite Library

“Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.”

“The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.”

“The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish.”

“The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).”

“When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.”

“Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.”

“What's a philosopher?' said Brutha. Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,' said a voice in his head.”

“Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.”

“We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork.”

“Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle.”

“What have I always believed? That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.”

“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!”

“There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.”

“Don't put your faith in gods. But you can believe in turtles.”

“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.”