Douglas Adams > Quotes

“Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn’t developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don’t expect to see.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Another world, another day, another dawn. The early morning;s thinnest sliver of light appeared silently. Several billion trillion tons of super hot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold, and slightly damp.

There is a moment in ever dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The term "fed up" actually comes from falconry. When you train a falcon, you train it by hunger, using it as a tool to manipulate the bird's psychology. So when the bird has had too much to eat, it won't cooperate and gets annoyed by any attempts to tell it what to do. It simply sits in the top of a tree and sulks. It is "fed up".”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else in life becomes eerily easy.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“They claimed it was for the sake of their grandparents and grandchildren, but it was of course for the sake of their grandparent’s grandchildren, and their grandchildren’s grandparents.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“One of the main problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can’t cope with.”
― Douglas Adams

“She felt faintly embarrassed by the sheer profusion of things she had for putting in baths, but she was for some reason incapable of passing any chemist’s or herb shop without going in to be seduced by some glass-stoppered bottle of something blue or green or orange or oily that was supposed to restore the natural balance of some vague substance she didn’t even know she was supposed to have in her pores.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Benim mutluluk kapasitemi bir kibrit kutusuna sığdırabilirsin. Hem de içindeki kibritleri bile çıkarmadan.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
It was a long time before anyone spoke.
Out of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea of tense expectant faces down in the square
outside.
"We're going to get lynched aren't we?" he whispered.
"It was a tough assignment," said Deep Thought mildly.
"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"
"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the
problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."
"But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything!" howled
Loonquawl.
"Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, "but what actually is it?"
A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other.
"Well, you know, it's just Everything ... Everything ..." offered Phouchg weakly.
"Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what
the answer means.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The secret of healthy hitchhiking is to eat junk food.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Shit!” yelled Arthur as helpfully as he could.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“It says in the brochure," said Arthur, pulling it out of his pocket and looking at it again, "that I can have a special prayer, individually tailored to me and my special needs."
- "Oh, all right," said the old man. "Here's a prayer for you. Got a pencil?"
- "Yes," said Arthur.
- "It goes like this. Let's see now: "Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen." That's it. It's what you pray silently inside yourself anyway, so you may as well have it out in the open."
- "Hmmm," said Arthur. "Well, thank you"
- "There's another prayer that goes with it that's very Important," continued the old man, "so you'd better jot this down, too, just in case. You can never be too sure. "Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer. Amen." And that's it. Most of the trouble people get into in life comes from missing out that last part.”
― Douglas Adams

“I incline to the quantum mechanical view in this matter. My theory is that your cat is not lost, but that his waveform has temporarily collapsed and must be restored. Schrödinger. Planck. And so on." -- Dirk Gently”
― Douglas Adams

“Some of the most revolutionary new ideas come from spotting something old to leave out rather than thinking of something new to put in.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“This is your captain speaking, so stop whatever you’re doing and pay attention. First of all I see from our instruments that we have a couple of hitchhikers aboard. Hello, wherever you are. I just want to make it totally clear that you are not at all welcome. I worked hard to get where I am today, and I didn’t become captain of a Vogon constructor ship simply so I could turn it into a taxi service for a load of degenerate freeloaders. I have sent out a search party, and as soon as they find you I will put you off the ship. If you’re very lucky I might read you some of my poetry first. “Secondly, we are about to jump into hyperspace for the journey to Barnard’s Star. On arrival we will stay in dock for a seventy-two-hour refit, and no one’s to leave the ship during that time. I repeat, all planet leave is canceled. I’ve just had an unhappy love affair, so I don’t see why anybody else should have a good time. Message ends.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“You're really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought. "Tell us!" "All right, said Deep Thought. "The answer to the Great Question..." "Yes...!" "Of Life, the Universe and Everything..." said Deep Thought. "Yes...!" "Is..." said Deep Thought, and paused. "Yes...!" "Is..." "Yes...!!!...?" "Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“If you are reading this on planet Earth then:

A. Good luck to you. There is an awful lot of stuff you don’t know anything about, but you are not alone in this. It’s just that in your case the consequences of not knowing any of this stuff are particularly terrible, but then, hey, that’s just the way the cookie gets completely stomped on and obliterated.

B. Don’t imagine you know what a computer terminal is.
A computer terminal is not some clunky old television with a typewriter in front of it. It is an interface where the mind and body can connect with the universe and move bits of it about.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“For seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact 42- and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“After five seconds there was a click, and the entire Universe was there in the box with him.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Because there are some things you have to do even if you are an enlightened liberal cop who knows all about sensitivity and everything!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“This must be Thursday,” said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. “I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“This is not, however, an ideal Universe,”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Kate wondered for a moment how it was that eyes conveyed such an immense amount of information about their owners. They were, after all, merely spheres of white gristle. They hardly changed as they got older, apart from getting a bit redder and a bit runnier. The iris opened and closed a bit, but that was all. Where did this flood of information come from?”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“It suddenly occurred to him to ask a question that had been bothering him. “Is it safe?” he said. “Magrathea’s been dead for five million years,” said Zaphod; “of course it’s safe. Even the ghosts will have settled down and raised families by now.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Come,” he said, sweeping through the door to where Miss Janice Pearce sat glaring at a pencil, “let us go. Let us leave this festering hellhole. Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“You mean," said Arthur, "you mean you can see into my mind?"
"Yes," said Marvin.
Arthur stared in astonishment.
"And ...?" he said.
"It amazes me how you can manage to live in anything that small.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“You know,” said Arthur thoughtfully, “all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I’ve had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was.” “No,” said the old man, “that’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.” “Everyone?” said Arthur. “Well, if everyone has that perhaps it means something! Perhaps somewhere outside the Universe we know …” “Maybe. Who cares?” said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too excited. “Perhaps I’m old and tired,” he continued, “but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“the normal background-noise type of guilt that comes from just being alive this far into the twentieth century,”
― Douglas Adams

“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?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy