Douglas Adams > Quotes

“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.”)”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“You mean you've been in this same set of rooms here for... two hundred years?' murmured Richard. 'You'd think someone would notice, or think it was odd.'

'Oh, that's one of the delights of the older Cambridge colleges,' said Reg, 'everyone is so discreet. If we all went around mentioning what was odd about each other we'd be here till Christmas.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“What have you done to it, Monkeyman? - he breathed.
- Well, - said Arthur, - nothing in fact. It's just that I think a
short while ago it was trying to work out how to...
- Yes?
- Make me some tea.
- That's right guys, - the computer sang out suddenly, - just coping
with that problem right now, and wow, it's a biggy. Be with you in a
while." It lapsed back into a silence that was only matched for sheer
intensity by the silence of the three people staring at Arthur Dent.”
― Douglas Adams

“Is that robot yours?” he said. “No,” came a thin metallic voice from the crater, “I’m mine.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Perhaps they are singing songs to you,' he said, 'and I just think they’re asking me questions.' He paused again. Sometimes he would pause for days, just to see what it was like.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“This sentence is not true”
― Douglas Adams

“For instance, when the Editors of the Guide were sued by the families of those who had died as a result of taking the entry on the planet Traal literally (it said “Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts often make a very good meal for visiting tourists” instead of “Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts often make a very good meal of visiting tourists”), they claimed that the first version of the sentence was the more aesthetically pleasing, summoned a qualified poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty and hoped thereby to prove that the guilty party in this case was Life itself for failing to be either beautiful or true. The judges concurred, and in a moving speech held that Life itself was in contempt of court, and duly confiscated it from all those there present before going off to enjoy a pleasant evening’s ultragolf. Zaphod”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“For all my rational Western intellect and education, I was for the moment overwhelmed by a primitive sense of living in a world ordered by a malign and perverted god, and it coloured my view of everything that afternoon—even the coconuts. The villagers sold us some and split them open for us. They are almost perfectly designed. You first make a hole and drink the milk, and then you split open the nut with a machete and slice off a segment of the shell, which forms a perfect implement for scooping out the coconut flesh inside. What makes you wonder about the nature of this god character is that he creates something that is so perfectly designed to be of benefit to human beings and then hangs it twenty feet above their heads on a tree with no branches.”
― Douglas Adams

“England no longer existed. He’d got that—somehow he’d got it. He tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn’t grasp it. He decided to start smaller again. New York has gone. No reaction. He’d never seriously believed it existed anyway. The dollar, he thought, has sunk for ever. Slight tremor there. Every Bogart movie has been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave him a nasty knock. McDonald’s, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald’s hamburger. He passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for his mother. He”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“É um erro acreditar que é possível resolver qualquer problema importante usando apenas batatas.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“The designer of the gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. ‘Make it evil,’ he’d been told. ‘Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them. If that means sticking all sort of spikes and prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a gun for hanging over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“No one with a thirst for knowledge goes to the university now. Half of the faculty has resigned, the other half gives courses in advanced ignorance”
― Douglas Adams

“If I asked you where the hell we were,” said Arthur weakly, “would I regret it?” Ford stood up. “We’re safe,” he said. “Oh good,” said Arthur. “We’re in a small galley cabin,” said Ford, “in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.” “Ah,” said Arthur, “this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn’t previously aware of.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The insurance companies involved had all claimed that this was, by any reasonable standards, an act of God. But, Dirk had argued, which god? Britain was constitutionally a Christian monotheistic state, and therefore any “act of God” defined in a legal document must refer to the Anglican chap in the stained glass and not to some polytheistic thug from Norway.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“The sky, from one horizon to another, from east to west, from north to south, was utterly and completely black.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“مهم ترین مشکل مسافرت زمانی، مشکل دستور زبانیه. یعنی همون مشکل زمان فعل ها. اسم مهم ترین کتابی که در این مورد به آدم کمک می‌کنه ۱۰۰۱ زمان گرامری برای مسافرانی که در زمان سفر میکنند، هست. این کتاب مثلا به آدم توضیح می‌ده که چه جوری درباره چیزی جمله بسازه که قرار بود در گذشته برای آدم اتفاق بیفته، اما آدم در سفر در زمان دو روز به جلو پریده و از دست اون اتفاق در رفته. زمان گرامری این اتفاق در حالت های مختلف متفاوته و به زاویه دید آدم بستگی داره. یه وقت آدم از زاویهء زمان طبیعی خودش به داستان نگاه میکنه، یه وقت از زاویه زمانی در آینده دور، یه وقت از زاویه زمانی در گذشته دور. داستان وقتی حسابی سرگرم کننده میشه که آدم در حین اینکه درباره این اتفاق حرف میزنه، درحال سفر از یک زمان به زمان دیگه باشه!

از زاویهء دید ِ یه زبانشناس ِ نصفه نیمه در زمان ِحال، این نویسنده یه دیوونه س! از اون دیوونه خوبا! ”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The Electric Monk's day was going tremendously well and he broke into an excited gallop. That is to say that, excitedly, he spurred his horse to a gallop and, unexcitedly, his horse broke into it.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Late in the evening they drove through the Hollywood hills along Mulholland Drive and stopped to look out first over the dazzling sea of floating light that is Los Angeles, and later stopped to look across the dazzling sea of floating light that is the San Fernando Valley. They agreed that the sense of dazzle stopped immediately at the back of their eyes and didn’t touch any other part of them and came away strangely unsatisfied by the spectacle. As dramatic seas of light went, it was fine, but light is meant to illuminate something, and having driven through what this particularly dramatic sea of light was illuminating they didn’t think much of it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz heaved his unpleasant green body round the control bridge. He always felt vaguely irritable after demolishing populated planets. He wished that someone would come and tell him that it was all wrong so that he could shout at them and feel better. He flopped as heavily as he could onto his control seat in the hope that it would break and give him something to be genuinely angry about, but it only gave a complaining sort of creak. “Go away!” he shouted at a young Vogon guard who entered the bridge at that moment. The guard vanished immediately, feeling rather relieved. He was glad it wouldn’t now be him who delivered the report they’d just received. The report was an official release which said that a wonderful new form of spaceship drive was at this moment being unveiled at a Government research base on Damogran which would henceforth make all hyperspatial express routes unnecessary.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Dizem em todos os níveis da indústria do entretenimento que o público americano não gosta ou não entende o humor inglês. Dizem isso em todos os níveis exceto no nível do público, que, pelo que eu vejo, adora. É a opinião dos outros, das pessoas cujo trabalho é dizer de que o público gosta...

A astúcia é escrever sobre pessoas. Se você escreve sobre situações que as pessoas reconhecem, então as pessoas vão reagir a elas.”
― Douglas Adams

“The The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
― Douglas Adams

“Now," said Benjy mouse, "to business."
Ford and Zaphod clinked their glasses together.
"To business!" they said.
"I beg your pardon?" said Benjy.
Ford looked round.
"Sorry, I thought you were proposing a toast," he said.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The bits which did mean anything were often so wonderfully buried that no one could ever spot them slipping past in the avalanche of nonsense.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I sat in a spluttering, bleeding heap protesting that I was fine and all I needed was a quiet corner to go and die in and everything would be all right.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“Insanity is a gradual process - don't rush it.”
― Douglas Adams, The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide

“I will understand perfectly if you don’t want to answer, but I will just keep pestering you until you do.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The voice was deep and quiet. In other circumstances it would even be described as soothing. There is, however, nothing soothing about being addressed by a disembodied voice out of nowhere, particularly when you are, like Zaphod Beeblebrox, not at your best and hanging from a ledge eight stories up a crashed building.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He goggled at her as if she’d said something very strange about beetroots.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything

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

“What are you after?"
...
"Well," said Zaphod airily, "It's partly the curiosity, partly a sense of adventure, but mostly I think it's the fame and the money....”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy