Douglas Adams Quotes

If I ever meet myself,' said Zaphod, 'I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's

If I ever meet myself,' said Zaphod, 'I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's hit me.

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.. Douglas Adams

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot

The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer. Douglas

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad

Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.. Douglas Adams

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean,

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral

My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre and that I am therefore excused from saving universes.

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

Life... is like a grapefruit. Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet

Life... is like a grapefruit. Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.

And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that

And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before-and thus was the Empire forged.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just

A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

So the hours are pretty good then?' he resumed. The Vogon stared down at him as

So the hours are pretty good then?' he resumed.
The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths.
Yeah,' he said, 'but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.

There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious.

Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple.'

Ah, well, I'm not sure I believe that.

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, 'As pretty as an airport.

To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.

Arthur: If I asked you where the hell we were, would I regret it?
Ford: We're safe.
Arthur: Oh good.
Ford: We're in a small galley cabin in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.
Arthur: Ah, this is obviously some strange use of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of.

Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was.

"Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.

I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.

Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner.

Ow! My brains!

Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying "Blood...blood...blood...blood...

What's up?" [asked Ford.]
I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there.

The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.

I have detected disturbances in the wash.'

'The wash?'

'The space-time wash.'

'Are we talking about some sort of Vogon laundromat, or what are we talking about?'

'Eddies in the space-time continuum.'

'Ah...is he. Is he.'

'What?'

'Er, who is Eddy, then, exactly?

My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first

Sorry, did I say something wrong?" said Marvin, dragging himself on regardless. "Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God I'm so depressed. Here's another one of those self-satisfied doors. Life! Don't talk to me about life.

We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.

Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."
(Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

And so the Universe ended.

This must be Thursday,' said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.

All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!

He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arm out wide. "I will go mad!" he annouced.

Life is wasted on the living.

So, the world is fine. We don’t have to save the world - the world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about, is whether or not the world we live in, will be capable of sustaining us in it. That’s what we need to think about.

Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.

The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the Q letter into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable.

To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

I'd far rather be happy than right any day.

But unless we determine to take action,' said the old man querulously, as if struggling against something deeply insouciant in his nature, 'then we shall all be destroyed, we shall all die. Surely we care about that?' 'Not enough to want to get killed over it,' said Ford.

In the center lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn't lived long enough to be disappointed with its lot.

God's Final Message to His Creation:
'We apologize for the inconvenience.

But she was finding it increasingly easy to believe that God, if there was a God, and if it was remotely possible that any godlike being who could order the disposition of particles at the creation of the Universe would also be interested in directing traffic on the M4, did not want her to fly to Norway either.

He sniggered.
He didn't like to think of himself as the sort of person who giggled or sniggered, but he had to admit that he had been giggling and sniggering almost continuously for well over half an hour now.

The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is...42!

Arthur shook his head and sat down. He looked up.
“I thought you must be dead …” he said simply.
“So did I for a while,” said Ford, “and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks. I kept myself amused all that time jumping in and out of a gin and tonic.

Ford Prefect suppressed a little giggle of evil satisfaction, realized that he had no reason to suppress it, and laughed out loud, a wicked laugh.

Fenchurch had red mullet and said it was delicious.
Arthur had a swordfish steak and said it made him angry. He grabbed a passing waitress by the arm and berated her.
“Why’s this fish so bloody good?” he demanded, angrily.

Same as you, Arthur. I hitched a ride. After all, with a degree in maths and another in astrophysics it was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday. Sorry I missed the Wednesday lunch date, but I was in a black hole all morning.

He felt a spasm of excitement because he knew instinctively who it was, or at least knew who it was he wanted it to be, and once you know what it is you want to be true, instinct is a very useful device for enabling you to know that it is.

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.

Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they'd have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City.

Trin Tragula - for that was his name - was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or as his wife would have it, an idiot.

First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII - and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure.

But what about the End of the Universe? We'll miss the big moment."
I've seen it. It's rubbish," said Zaphod,"nothing but a gnab gib."
A what?"
Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let's get zappy.

I think we have different value systems." - Arthur
"Well mine's better." - Ford

What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day.

There was once a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler’s mind.

He hadn't realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice that brings you answers for the questions you continually ask of it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones until it now said something it had never said to him before, which was "yes".

Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food.

I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.

What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"Ask a glass of water!

The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner', but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.

Life,” said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.

The waiter approached.
'Would you like to see the menu?' he said. 'Or would you like to meet the Dish of the Day?'
'Huh?' said Ford.
'Huh?' said Arthur.
'Huh?' said Trillian.
'That’s cool,' said Zaphod. 'We'll meet the meat.

Could be. I’m a pretty dangerous dude when I’m cornered.”
“Yeah,” said the voice from under the table, “you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.

Beppu (n.)

The triumphant slamming shut of a book after reading the final page.

The little waiter's eyebrows wandered about his forehead in confusion.

Alltami (n.)

The ancient art of being able to balance the hot and cold shower taps.

Aberystwyth (n.)

A nostalgic yearning which is in itself more pleasant than the thing being yearned for.

E' sbagliato pensare di risolvere grossi problemi con il solo ausilio delle patate fritte.

A five-week sand blizzard?" said Deep Thought haughtily. "You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff.

The party blundered helplessly across the sky like a man leaning against an unexpectedly open door. It spun and wobbled on its hover jets. It tried to right itself and wronged itself instead.

Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability to make a Schecter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff drink.

CLUN (n.) A leg which has gone to sleep and has to be hauled around after you.

BOTOLPHS (pl.n) Huge benign tumours which archdeacons and old chemistry teachers affect to wear on the sides of their noses.

The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along.

The main reception foyer was almost empty but Ford nevertheless weaved his way through it.

The mere thought," growled Mr Prosser, "hadn't even begun to speculate," he continued, settling himself back, "about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

Beauty doesn't have to be about anything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto about?

And then, just when you think that you have experienced all the wonders that this world has to offer, you round a peak and suddenly think you're doing the whole thing over again, but this time on drugs.

Fiordland, a vast tract of mountainous terrain that occupies the south-west corner of South Island, New Zealand, is one of the most astounding pieces of land anywhere on God's earth, and one's first impulse, standing on a cliff top surveying it all, is simply to burst into spontaneous applause.

Reality is frequently inaccurate.

There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.

Being virtually killed by a virtual laser in a virtual space is just as effective as the real thing, because you are as dead as you think you are.

But for a moment Dirk had a sense of inifinite loss and sadness that somewhere among the frenzy of information noise that daily rattled the lives of men he thought he might have heard a few notes that denoted the movements of gods.

And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe.

I vaguely remember my schooldays. They were what was going on in the background while I was trying to listen to the Beatles.

Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.

Certamente era um homem que possuía muitas qualidades, mesmo que fossem quase todas ruins.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "future perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.

There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.

We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win.

A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment.

Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.

People who need to bully you are the easiest to push around.

It was his subconscious which told him this-that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.

Rather than arriving five hours late and flustered, it would be better all around if he were to arrive five hours and a few extra minutes late, but triumphantly in command.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means.

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