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‘This is going to go the distance?’ ‘Yep. It’s got to. We’ve got to stop this, Ned. This is the only chance. It stops here or not at all. Can you imagine him loose now he’s pally with Snapcase?’ ‘Yes. I can,’ said Ned. ‘Just as well I wasn’t planning anything this evening, eh? But you can tell me one thing, sarge. How do you know all this?’ Vimes hesitated. But at a time like this, what difference did it make? ‘I’m from this city,’ said Vimes. ‘But, oh, there was a hole in time, something like that. You want to know? I travelled here in time, Ned, and that’s the truth.’ Ned Coates looked him up and down. Blood covered Vimes’s armour, and his hands, and half his face, and he was holding a bloody sword in his hand. ‘From how far back?’ he said.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 316)

But those who filled the grates and dusted the furniture and swept the floors stayed on, as they had stayed on before, because they seldom paid any attention to, or possibly didn’t even know, who their lord was, and in any case were too useful and knew where the brooms were kept. Lords come and go, but dust accumulates.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 294)

All it had was the unimportant stuff. It had the entire slaughterhouse district, and the butter market, and the cheese market. It had the tobacco factors and the candlemakers and most of the fruit and vegetable warehouses and the grain and flour stores. This meant that while the Republicans were being starved of important things like government, banking services and salvation, they were self-sufficient in terms of humdrum, everyday things like food and drink. People are content to wait a long time for salvation, but prefer dinner to turn up inside an hour.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 274)

‘Tell us about this man Keel,’ said the major. ‘I don’t know nuffin’,’ said Nobby automatically. ‘Aha, that means you do know something,’ said the major, who was indeed the sort of person who liked this kind of little triumph. Nobby looked blank. The captain leaned forward to whisper to his superior officer. ‘Er, only under the rules of mathematics, sir,’ he said. ‘Under the rules of common grammar, he is merely being emphat—’ ‘Tell us about Keel!’ the major shouted.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 264)

‘You took an oath to uphold the law and defend the citizens without fear or favour,’ said Vimes. ‘And to protect the innocent. That’s all they put in. Maybe they thought those were the important things. Nothing in there about orders, even from me. You’re an officer of the law, not a soldier of the government.’

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 218)

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up. What would run through the streets soon enough wouldn’t be a revolution or a riot. It’d be people who were frightened and panicking. It was what happened when the machinery of city life faltered, the wheels stopped turning and all the little rules broke down. And when that happened, humans were worse than sheep. Sheep just ran; they didn’t try to bite the sheep next to them.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 207)

They attacked the other Houses, and what’s the Night Watch ever done to hurt them?’ ‘Nothing,’ said Vimes. ‘There you are, then.’ ‘I mean the Watch did nothing, and that’s what hurt them,’ said Vimes.

— Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6) by Terry Pratchett (Page 192)