Douglas Adams > Quotes

“Mr. Beeblebrox, sir,' said the insect in awed wonder, 'you’re so weird you should be in movies.;
'Yeah,' said Zaphod patting the thing on a glittering pink wing, 'and you, baby, should be in real life.' The insect paused for a moment”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“They found a coin and helped him to the telescope. He complained and insulted them, but they helped him look at each individual letter in turn. The first letter was a 'w,' the second an 'e.' Then there was a gap. An 'a' followed, then a 'p,' an 'o,' and an 'l.'

Marvin paused for a rest.

After a few moments they resumed and let him see the 'o,' the 'g,' the 'i,' the 'z,' and the 'e.'

The next two words were 'for' and 'the.' The last one was a long one, and Marvin needed another rest before the could tackle it.

It started with 'i,' then 'n,' then 'c.' Next came an 'o' and an 'n,' followed by a 'v,' an 'e,' another 'n,' and an 'i.'

After a final pause, Marvin gathered his strength for the last stretch.

He read the 'e,' the 'n,' the 'c,' and at last the final 'e,' and staggered back into their arms.

'I think,' he murmured at last from deep within his corroding, rattling thorax, 'I feel good about it.'

The lights went out in his eyes for absolutely the very last time ever.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“But though there are frequent misunderstandings between the Europeans and the Americans, at least we’ve had decades of shared movies and TV to help us get used to each other. Outside those bounds you can’t make any assumptions at all. In China, for instance, the poet James Fenton was once stopped for having a light on his bicycle.

“How would it be,” the police officer asked him severely, “if everybody did that?”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Kilka zakrętów dalej byłem już zabłąkany z kretesem. Jedna ze szkół myślenia radzi w takich wypadkach skonsultowanie się z mapą, lecz ja takim ludziom mówię po prostu: „A co, jeśli się nie ma mapy? A co, jeśli ma się tylko mapę Dordogne?” Moja strategia wygląda tak: znajduję samochód albo najbliższy jego ekwiwalent, który wygląda tak, jakby wiedział, dokąd zmierza, i jadę za nim. Rzadko ląduję tam, gdzie zamierzałem, ale za to często ląduję tam, gdzie powinienem być.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“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

“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

“You know,’ said Arthur, ‘it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.’ ‘Why, what did she tell you?’ ‘I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“My name,' said the mattress, 'is Zem. We could discuss the weather a little.' Marvin paused again in his weary circular pplod. 'The dew,' he observed, 'has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning.' He resumed his walk, as if inspired by this conversational outburst to fresh heights of gloom and despondency. He plodded tenaciously. If he had had teeth he would have gritted them at this point. He hadn't. He didn't. The mere plod said it all. The mattress flolloped around.”
― Douglas Adams

“They would appear,” said Ford doubtfully, “to have turned into a bowl of petunias and a very surprised-looking whale”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He had had a terribly therapeutic yell at his prisoners and was now feeling quite relaxed and ready for a little callousness. The prisoners sat in Poetry Appreciation chairs—strapped in. Vogons suffered no illusions as to the regard their works were generally held in. Their early attempts at composition had been part of a bludgeoning insistence that they be accepted as a properly evolved and cultured race,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Never throw the letter Q into a privet bush.”
― Douglas Adams

“Hey, who are you?” he quacked. “Where are you? What’s going on and is there any way of stopping it?” “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.” “But that’s not the point!” raged Ford. “The point is that I am now a perfectly safe penguin, and my colleague here is rapidly running out of limbs!” “It’s all right, I’ve got them back now,” said Arthur. “Two to the power of fifty thousand to one against and falling,” said the voice. “Admittedly,” said Arthur, “they’re longer than I usually like them, but …” “Isn’t there anything,” squawked Ford in avian fury, “you feel you ought to be telling us?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian 'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kill cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.
What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound importance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“He would insult the Universe. That is, he would insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his teeth over) in alphabetical order.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“They consulted the computer. It said: “I regret I have been temporarily closed to all communication. Meanwhile, here is some light music.” They turned off the light music.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Life was too short, the weather too fine, and the world too full of interesting and exciting pitfalls.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Tips for aliens in New York: ‘Land anywhere, Central Park, anywhere. No one will care, or indeed even notice. ‘Surviving: Get a job as a cab driver immediately. A cab driver’s job is to drive people anywhere they want to go in big yellow machines called taxis. Don’t worry if you don’t know how the machine works and you can’t speak the language, don’t understand the geography or indeed the basic physics of the area, and have large green antennae growing out of your head. Believe me, this is the best way of staying inconspicuous. ‘If your body is really weird try showing it to people in the streets for money.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five