Douglas Adams > Quotes

“It seemed to me," said Wonko the sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“So we’re not home and dry,” he said. “We could not even be said,” replied Ford, “to be home and vigorously toweling ourselves off.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It's all right," she said in a voice which would have calmed the Big Bang down.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“This was the very limit beyond which none of them had ever speculated, or even known that there was any speculation to be done.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn’t exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar. He”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in--an interesting hole I find myself in--fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be all right, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch-out for. We all know that at some point in the future the universe will come to an end, and at some other point, considerably in advance from that but still not immediately pressing, the sun will explode. We feel there's plenty of time to worry about that, but on the other hand that's a very dangerous thing to say... I think that we need to take a larger perspective on who we are and what we are doing here if we are going to survive in the long term.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“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

“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

“People often ask where I get my ideas from, sometimes as often as eighty-seven times a day. This is a well-known hazard for writers, and the correct response to the question is first to breathe deeply, steady your heartbeat, fill your mind with peaceful, calming images of birdsong and buttercups in spring meadows, and then try to say, "It's very interesting you ask that..." before breaking down and start to whimper uncontrollably.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Something pink? Something with extra Vitamin B? Vitamin B12? B13? Just the number of things with different types of Vitamin B in them was an embarrassment of choice itself. There were powders as well as oils, tubes of gel, even packets of some kind of pungent -smelling seed that was meant to be good for some obscure part of you in some arcane way.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“[..] when we get down to the subatomic level, the solid world we live in also consists, again rather worryingly, of almost nothing and that whenever we do find something it turns out not to actually something, but only the probability that there may something there.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Stress and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all parts of the Galaxy, and it is in order that this situation should not be in any way exacerbated that the following facts will now be revealed in advance.

The planet in question is in fact the legendary Magrathea. The deadly missile attack shortly to be launched by an ancient automatic defense system will result merely in the breakage of three coffee cups and a mouse cage, the bruising of somebody’s upper arm, and the untimely creation and sudden demise of a bowl of petunias and an innocent sperm whale.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“It now transpired that the man in front of her didn’t actually have a ticket at all, and the argument then began to range freely and angrily over such topics as the physical appearance of the airline check-in girl, her qualities as a person, theories about her ancestors, speculations as to what surprises the future might have in store for her and the airline for which she worked, and finally lit by chance on the happy subject of the man’s credit card. He didn’t have one.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Beyinlerinin bu karanlık ve kilitli köşelerinden kurtulabilmeyi isterdi, çünkü burada saklı olanlar arada sırada bir an için yüzeye çıkıyor, zihninin neşe ve eğlence bölümünü tuhaf düşüncelerle doldurarak, kendisini hayatının temel görevi olarak gördüğü şeyden, yani harika bir şekilde iyi zaman geçirmekten alıkoymaya çalışıyorlardı.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it. Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“There are limitless futures stretching out in every direction from this moment—and from this moment and from this. Billions of them, bifurcating every instant! Every possible position of every possible electron balloons out into billions of probabilities! Billions and billions of shining, gleaming futures!”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The idea of a Universe didn’t fit into their world picture, so to speak. They simply couldn’t cope with it. And so, charmingly, delightfully, intelligently, whimsically if you like, they decided to destroy it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“We have a saying up here. ‘Life is wasted on the living.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“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."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED"
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Mark Carwardine's role, essentially, was to be the one who knew what he was talking about. My role, and one for which I was entirely qualified, was to be an extremely ignorant non-zoologist to whom everything that happened would come as a complete surprise.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive—you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He giggled and sniggered. He would have laughed out loud but he didn't have the room.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.”
― Douglas Adams

“Richard continued, “What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that’s really the essence of programming. By the time you’ve sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you’ve certainly learned something about it yourself. The teacher usually learns more than the pupil. Isn’t that true?”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council,” the voice continued. “As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy