The Wit And Wisdom Of Discworld

freedom, Mr Lipwig. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.’
    *
    The world was blessedly free of honest men, and wonderfully full of people who believed they could tell the difference between an honest man and a crook.

    He had a beard of the short bristled type that suggested that its owner had been interrupted halfway through eating a hedgehog.

    A large black and white cat had walked into the room.
    ‘That’s Mr Tiddles, sir,’ said Groat.
    ‘Tiddles?’ said Moist. ‘You mean that really is a cat’s name? I thought it was just a joke.’
    ‘Not so much a name, sir, more of a description,’ said Groat.
    *
    Before you could sell glass as diamonds you had to make people really want to see diamonds. That was the trick, the trick of all tricks. You changed the way people saw the world. You let them see it the way they wanted it to be …
    *
    Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off to dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault.
    *
    ‘Looks like you’re genuine after all, then,’ the old man said. ‘One of the dark clerks wouldn’t have [done] that. We thought you was one of his lordship’s special gentlemen, see. No offence, but you’ve got a bit more colour than the average penpusher.’
    ‘Dark clerks?’ said Moist, and then recollection dawned. ‘Oh … do you mean those stocky little men in black suits and bowler hats?’
    ‘The very same. Scholarship boys at the Assassins’ Guild, some of ‘em. I heard that they can do some nasty things when they’ve a mind.’
    ‘I thought you called them pen-pushers?’
    Yeah, but I didn’t say where, hee-hee.’
    *
    Mr Pump, a golem, points out to conman Moist von Lipwig the downstream consequences of what had seemed to Moist to be harmless scams to separate fools from their money:
    You can’t just go around killing people!’ shouted Moist.
    ‘Why Not? You Do.’
    ‘What? I do not! Who told you that?’
    ‘I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People,’ said the golem calmly.
    ‘I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be -all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!’
    ‘No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses
    And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.’
    Moist’s mouth had dropped open. It shut. It opened again. It shut again. You can never find repartee when you need it.
    ‘I Have Read The Details Of Your Many Crimes, Mr Lipvig. You Took From Others Because You Were Clever And They Were Stupid.’
    ‘Hold on, most of the time they thought they were swindling me!’
    ‘You Set Out To Trap Them, Mr Lipvig.’

    People in Ankh-Morpork
    always paid attention to people on rooftops, in case there was a chance of an interesting suicide.

    By law and tradition the great Library of Unseen University is open to the public, although they aren’t allowed as far as the magical shelves. They don’t realize this, however, since the rules of time and space are twisted inside the Library and so hundreds of miles of shelving can easily be concealed inside a space roughly the thickness of paint.
    People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as ‘Is this the laundry?’ ‘How do you spell surreptitious?’ and, on a regular basis: