Douglas Adams > Quotes

“An island, on the other hand, is small. There are fewer species, and the competition for survival has never reached anything like the pitch that it does on the mainland. Species are only as tough as they need to be, life is much quieter and more settled [..] So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight - the locals wouldn't stand a chance.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“At every level, vital instructions were missing, and the instructions about what to do in the event of discovering that vital instructions were missing, were also missing.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“That’s right … we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“We know, however, that the mind is capable of understanding these matters in all their complexity and in all their simplicity. A ball flying through the air is responding to the force and direction with which it was thrown, the action of gravity, the friction of the air which it must expend its energy on overcoming, the turbulence of the air around its surface, and the rate and direction of the ball's spin. And yet, someone who might have difficulty consciously trying to work out what 3 x 4 x 5 comes to would have no trouble in doing differential calculus and a whole host of related calculations so astoundingly fast that they can actually catch a flying ball.

People who call this "instinct" are merely giving the phenomenon a name, not explaining anything. I think that the closest that human beings come to expressing our understanding of these natural complexities is in music. It is the most abstract of the arts - it has no meaning or purpose other than to be itself.

Every single aspect of a piece of music can be represented by numbers. From the organization of movements in a whole symphony, down through the patterns of pitch and rhythm that make up the melodies and harmonies, the dynamics that shape the performance, all the way down to the timbres of the notes themselves, their harmonics, the way they change over time, in short, all the elements of a noise that distinguish between the sound of one person piping on a piccolo and another one thumping a drum - all of these things can be expressed by patterns and hierarchies of numbers. And in my experience the more internal relationships there are between the patterns of numbers at different levels of the hierarchy, however complex and subtle those relationships may be, the more satisfying and, well, whole, the music will seem to be. In fact the more subtle and complex those relationships, and the further they are beyond the grasp of the conscious mind, the more the instinctive part of your mind - by which I mean that part of your mind that can do differential calculus so astoundingly fast that it will put your hand in the right place to catch a flying ball- the more that part of your brain revels in it. Music of any complexity (and even "Three Blind Mice" is complex in its way by the time someone has actually performed it on an instrument with its own individual timbre and articulation) passes beyond your conscious mind into the arms of your own private mathematical genius who dwells in your unconscious responding to all the inner complexities and relationships and proportions that we think we know nothing about.

Some people object to such a view of music, saying that if you reduce music to mathematics, where does the emotion come into it? I would say that it's never been out of it.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“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.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“Holy Zarquon, did I ask for an existentialist elevator?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“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.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Yes it is," said the Professor. "Wait—" he motioned to Richard, who was about to go out again and investigate— "let it be. It won’t be long."

Richard stared in disbelief. "You say there’s a horse in your bathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?"

The Professor looked blankly at him.

"Listen," he said, "I'm sorry if...I alarmed you earlier, it was just a slight turn. These things happen, my dear fellow, don't upset yourself about it. Dear me, I've known odder things in my time. Many of them. Far odder. She's only a horse, for heaven's sake. I'll go and let her out later. Please don't concern yourself. Let us revive our spirits with some port."

"But...how did it get in there?"

"Well, the bathroom window's open. I expect she came in through that."

Richard looked at him, not for the first and certainly not for the last time, through eyes that were narrowed with suspicion.

"You're doing it deliberately, aren't you," he said.

"Doing what, my dear fellow?”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.” “Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him. “Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“We’ll meet the meat.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.” “Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.” “I did,” said Ford. “It is.” “So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?” “It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.” “You mean they actually vote for the lizards?” “Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.” “But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?” “Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“...was friend the word? He seemed more like a succession of extraordinary events than a person.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Did you know, young lady," said Watkin to her, "that the Book of Revelation was written on Patmos? It was indeed. By Saint John the Divine, as you know. To me it shows very clear signs of having been written while waiting for a ferry. Oh, yes, I think so. It starts off, doesn't it, with that kind of dreaminess you get when you're killing time, getting bored, you know, just making things up, and then gradually grows to a sort of climax of hallucinatory despair.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“the rest of you... keep banging the rocks together”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“What a wonderfully exciting cough,' said the little man, quite startled by it, 'do you mind if I join you?' And with that he launched into the most extraordinary and spectacular fit of coughing which caught Arthur so much by surprise that he started to choke violently, discovered he was already doing it and got thoroughly confused.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Look, why don’t you sit yourself down over there and let me plug you in?” He gestured Arthur toward a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus. “It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus,” explained the old man”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I could have more fun in cat litter.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Oh don't give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit/ No, don't you give me none 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”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“We already have the Wooden Pillar, the Steel Pillar and the Plastic Pillar. In a moment we will have the Golden Bail....'
No, you won't.'
We will,' stated the robot simply.
No, you won't. It makes my ship work.'
In a moment,' repeated the robot patiently, 'we will have the Golden Bail....'
You will not,' said Zaphod.
And then we must go,' said the robot, in all seriousness, 'to a party.'
Oh,' said Zaphod, startled, 'can I come?'
No,' said the robot, 'we are going to shoot you.'
Oh, yeah?' said Zaphod, waggling his gun.
Yes,' said the robot, and they shot him.
Zaphod was so surprised that they had to shoot him again before he fell down. (85-86)”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
― Douglas Adams, Douglas Adams' the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Authorized Collection

“But that can't work, can it?" Said Richard. "If we do that, then this won't have happened. Don't we generate all sorts of paradoxes?"
Reg stirred himself from thought. "No worse than many that exist already," he said. "If the universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if its done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make. That isn't to say if you get involved in a paradox a few things won't strike you as being very odd, but if you've got through life without that already happening to you, then I don't know which universe you've been living in, but it isn't this one”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“Even the evil-looking bird perched on a rod in the bar had stopped screeching out the names and addresses of local contract killers, which was a service it provided for free.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“The mice will see you now," he said.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Resumamos: es un hecho bien conocido que las personas que más deseos
tienen de gobernar a la gente son, ipso facto, las menos adecuadas para ello.
Abreviemos el resumen: a cualquiera que sea capaz de nombrarse Presidente
a sí mismo, no debería permitírsele en modo alguno realizar dicha tarea.
Abreviemos el resumen del resumen: la gente es un problema.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“I don’t know, apathetic bloody planet, I’ve no sympathy at all.”
― Douglas Adams

“i have the brain the size of a planet and you want to talk to me about life”
― marvin the android

“I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy