# Quote — Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

> It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing. (p. 116)

- Author: [Terry Pratchett](https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett.md)
- Book: [Guards! Guards!](https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett/guards-guards.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Guards!_Guards!#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett/guards-guards/it-was-amazing

## More from this book

> Up in the gloom the heads of dead animals haunted the walls. The Ramkins seemed to have endangered more species than an ice age. (p. 349)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett/guards-guards/up-in-the.md)

> "Down there," he said, "are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no." (p. 337)

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett/guards-guards/down-there-he-said.md)

> 'No one knows how to do officering, Fred. That's why they're officers. If they'd knew anything, they'd be sergeants.'

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/terry-pratchett/guards-guards/no-one-knows.md)