Douglas Adams > Quotes

“My doctor says that I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber,” he muttered to himself, “and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it. 'It's just life,' they say.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Arthur and Trillian had the fixed expressions of rabbits on a night road who think that the best way of dealing with approaching headlights is to stare them out.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Dirk looked at her expressionlessly. Apart from being extremely good-looking in a blondish, willowyish kind of way, she was dressed well in an “I don’t care what I wear, just any old thing that’s lying around” kind of way that relies on extremely careful about what you leave lying around.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer’s movement in space, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer’s movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer’s movement in restaurants.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“The horse, it must be said, was quite surprised.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“He was trying to marshal his arguments for proving that he did not now constitute a mental-health hazard himself. He was far from certain about this – his mind seemed to be full of noise, horses, smoke, and the stench of blood.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Luckily," he went on, "you have come to exactly the right place with your interesting problem, for there is no such word as 'impossible' in my dictionary. In fact," he added, brandishing the abused book, "everything between 'herring' and 'marmalade' appears to be missing.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Fuck ’em,” said Ford, slumping on the bed. “You can’t care about every damn thing.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“There was only one ambition that anyone on the planet ever had, and that was to leave.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“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

“Arthur! You're safe!" A voice cried.
"Am I?" said Arthur, rather startled. "Oh, good.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity—distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“That young girl,” he added unexpectedly, “is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened, it’s just wonderful. And … the opportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned.”
― Douglas Adams

“The first thing that hit their eyes was what appeared to be a coffin.
And the next four thousand nine hundred and ninety nine things that hit their eyes were also coffins.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Six pints of bitter,” said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse and Groom. “And quickly please, the world’s about to end.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It is a farewell gift from the dolphins,” said Wonko in a low quiet voice, “the dolphins whom I loved and studied, and swam with, and fed with fish, and even tried to learn their language, a task which they seemed to make impossibly difficult, considering the fact that I now realize they were perfectly capable of communicating in ours if they decided they wanted to.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy