Douglas Adams > Quotes

“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.”
― Douglas Adams

“A computer chatted to itself in alarm as it noticed an airlock open and close itself for no apparent reason.
This was because Reason was in fact out to lunch.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "as pretty as an airport". Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (...) and the architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.
They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of the Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not".”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Let us be dreamers, thinkers, speculative philosophers, or as our spouses would have it: Idiots”
― Douglas Adams

“Conceited little mega-puppy.”
― Douglas Adams

“Zaphod marched quickly down the passageway, nervous as hell, but trying to hide it by striding purposefully.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Janx Spirit : Janx Spirit is a rather potent alcoholic beverage, and is used heavily in drinking games that are played in the hyperspace ports that serve the madranite mining belts in the star system of Orion Beta. The game is not unlike the Earth game called Indian Wrestling, and is played like this: Two contestants sit at either side of a table, with a glass in front of each of them. Between them would be placed a bottle of Janx Spirit — as immortalized in that ancient Orion mining song :

“Oh don’t give me no more of that Old Janx Spirit
No, don’t you give me no more of that Old Janx Spirit
For my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die
Won’t you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit”

Each of the two contestants would then concentrate their will on the bottle and attempt to tip it and pour spirit into the glass of his opponent – who would then have to drink it. The bottle would then be refilled. The game would be played again. And again. Once you started to lose you would probably keep losing, because one of the effects of Janx spirit is to depress telepsychic power. As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the final loser would have to perform a forfeit, which was usually obscenely biological.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Alltami (n.)

The ancient art of being able to balance the hot and cold shower taps.”
― Douglas Adams, The Deeper Meaning of Liff: A Dictionary of Things There Aren't Any Words for Yet--But There Ought to Be

“And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees
in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“I vaguely remember my schooldays. They were what was going on in the background while I was trying to listen to the Beatles.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“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.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Aberystwyth (n.)

A nostalgic yearning which is in itself more pleasant than the thing being yearned for.”
― Douglas Adams, The Deeper Meaning of Liff: A Dictionary of Things There Aren't Any Words for Yet--But There Ought to Be

“You barbarians!' he yelled. 'I'll sue the council for every penny it's got! I'll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled...until...until...until...until you've had enough.'
Ford was running after him. Very very fast.
'And then I will do it again!' yelled Arthur, 'And when I've finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Sometimes if you received an answer, the question might be taken away.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smartass.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Would you like to see the menu?" he said, "or would you like meet the Dish of the Day?"

...

“Good evening,” it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, “I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Marvin trudged on down the corridor, still moaning. "...and then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left hand side..."
"No?" said Arthur grimly as he walked along beside him. "Really?"
"Oh yes," said Marvin, "I mean I've asked for them to be replaced but no one ever listens."
"I can imagine.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“He felt like an old sponge steeped in paraffin and left in the sun to dry.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running around inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.”
― Douglas Adams

“Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this -- partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Please relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines one of which is on fire, "you are perfectly safe.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“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.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“He actually caught himself saying things like "Yippee," as he pranced ridiculously round the house.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“The bowler approached the wicket at a lope, a trot, and then a run. He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“One day old Thrashbarg said that Almighty Bob had declared that he, Thrashbarg, was to have first pick of the sandwiches. The villagers asked him when this had happened, exactly, and Thrashbarg said it had happened yesterday, when they weren't looking. 'Have faith,' Old Thrashbarg said, 'or burn!'

They let him have first pick of the sandwiches. It seemed easiest.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story

“Why' is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it.

The alphabet does not go 'A B C D What? When? How?' but it does go 'V W X Why? Z.”
― Douglas Adams

“In the past the whales had been able to sing to each other across whole oceans, even from one ocean to another because sound travels such huge distances underwater. But now, again because of the way in which sound travels, there is no part of the ocean that is not constantly jangling with the hubbub of ships’ motors, through which it is now virtually impossible for the whales to hear each other’s songs or messages.

So fucking what, is pretty much the way that people tend to view this problem, and understandably so, thought Dirk. After all, who wants to hear a bunch of fat fish, oh all right, mammals, burping at each other?

But for a moment Dirk had a sense of infinite loss and sadness that somewhere amongst 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.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Mc Donalds he thought. There's no longer any such thing as a Mc Donalds hamburger. He passed out. When he came around seconds later he found he was sobbing for his mother.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”
― Douglas Adams

“I've never understood all this fuss people make about the dawn. I've seen a few and they're never as good as the photographs, which have the additional advantage of being things you can look at when you're in the right frame of mind, which is usually around lunchtime.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See