Douglas Adams > Quotes

“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question “How can we eat?”, ​the second by the question “Why do we eat?” and the third by the question, “Where shall we have lunch?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“So that you understand that just because you see something, it doesn’t mean to say it’s there. And if you don’t see something it doesn’t mean to say it’s not there, it’s only what your senses bring to your attention.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“In the great debate that has raged for centuries about what, if anything, happens to you after death, be it heaven, hell, purgatory or extinction, one thing has never been in doubt—that you would at least know the answer when you were dead. Gordon Way was dead, but he simply hadn’t the slightest idea what he was meant to do about it.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“The sky clenched, a mountain of mud convulsed, earth and sky bellowed at each other, there was a horrible pinkness, a sudden greenness, a lingering orangeness that stained the clouds, and then the light sank and the night at last was deeply, hideously dark. There was no further sound other than the soft tinkle of water. But”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“He gestured Arthur toward a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus. “It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“His head was swimming freestyle, but someone in his stomach was doing the butterfly.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“What’s that?” he yelped. “Don’t worry,” said Ford, “they haven’t started yet.” “Thank God for that,” said Arthur, and relaxed. “It’s probably just your house being knocked down,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Groop I implore thee,” continued the merciless Vogon, “my foonting turlingdromes.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“But what about the End of the Universe? We’ll miss the big moment.” “I’ve seen it. It’s rubbish,” said Zaphod, “nothing but a gnab gib.” “A what?” “Opposite of a big bang.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The girl he had dragged along to the pub with him had grown to loathe him dearly over the last hour, and it would probably have been a great satisfaction to her to know that in a minute and a half or so he would suddenly evaporate into a whiff of hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide. However, when the moment came she would be too busy evaporating herself to notice it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I speak of none but the computer that is to come after me,” intoned Deep Thought, his voice regaining its accustomed declamatory tones. “A computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate—and yet I will design it for you. A computer that can calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself shall form part of its operational matrix. And you yourselves shall take on new forms and go down into the computer to navigate its ten-million-year program! Yes! I shall design this computer for you. And I shall name it also unto you. And it shall be called…the Earth.” Phouchg”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“– Ну, сколько у нас спасательных капсул?
– Ни одной.
– Хорошо пересчитал?
– Два раза”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Frank Halford was a master at the school and remembers Adams as “very tall even then, and popular. He wrote an end-of-term play when Doctor Who had just started on television. He called it ‘Doctor Which.’ ” Many years later, Adams did write scripts for Doctor Who. He describes Halford as an inspirational teacher who is still a support. “He once gave me ten out of ten for a story, which was the only time he did throughout his long school career. And even now, when I have a dark night of the soul as a writer and think that I can’t do this anymore, the thing that I reach for is not the fact that I have had best-sellers or huge advances. It is the fact that Frank Halford once gave me ten out of ten, and at some fundamental level I must be able to do it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Bütün bu geldiğim yol, diye düşünüyordu Zaphod, bütün bu belalar, bütün bu plajda-yan-gelip-yatıp-harika-vakit-geçirememeler, peki ama ne için?”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“All except the Hooloovoo were resplendent in their multicolored ceremonial lab coats; the Hooloovoo had been temporarily refracted into a free-standing prism for the occasion. There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through all of them. Together and between them they had gone to and beyond the furthest limits of physical laws, restructured the fundamental fabric of matter, strained, twisted and broken the laws of possibility and impossibility, but still the greatest excitement of all seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash round his neck.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Well, there’s probably a lot you don’t know about me,” said Arthur. “Come to mention it, there’s probably a lot I don’t know about me either.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“They plunged through heavy walls of sound, mountains of archaic thought, valleys of mood music, bad shoe sessions and footling bats and suddenly heard a girl's voice.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“I have to own up and say that, much as I love my PowerBook, which now does about 97.8 percent of what I used to use the lumbering old desktop dinosaurs for, I’ve given up trying to use it on planes. Yes, yes, I know that there are sorts of power-user strategies you can use to extend your battery life—dimming modes, RAM disks, processor-resting, and so on—but the point is that I really can’t be bothered. I’m perfectly capable of just reading the in-flight magazine if I want to be irritated.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“I always thought that about the Garden of Eden story," said Ford.
"Eh?"
"Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?"
"Yes of course I do."
"Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says do what you like guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting `Gotcha'. It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it."
"Why not?"
"Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end."
"What are you talking about?"
"Never mind, eat the fruit.”
― 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. “‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Do you think they came today?' he said. 'I do. There’s mud on the floor, cigarettes and whisky on the table, fish on a plate for you and a memory of them in my mind. Hardly conclusive evidence I know, but then all evidence is circumstantial.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Your arrival on the planet has caused considerable excitement. It has already been hailed, so I gather, as the third most improbable event in the history of the Universe.”
“What were the first two?”
“Oh, probably just coincidences,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts

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

“Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we’re straight out of a job, aren’t we?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I just thought you’d like to see,’ he said, ‘what angels wear on their feet. Just out of curiosity. I’m not trying to prove anything, by the way. I’m a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that. I’ll show you something to demonstrate that later. So, the other reason I call myself Wonko the Sane is so that people will think I am a fool. That allows me to say what I see when I see it. You can’t possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you’re a fool.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy of Five

“He hadn't realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice that brings you answers for the questions you continually ask of it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones until it now said something it had never said to him before, which was "yes".”
― Douglas Adams

“I love deadlines,” he said once. “I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.”) He died in May 2001—too young. His”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy