Douglas Adams > Quotes

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, while the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet—or more frequently around a completely different planet.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Ford was humming something. it was just one note repeated at intervals. He was hoping that somebody would ask him what he was humming, but nobody did. if anybody had asked him he would have said he was humming the first line of a Noel Coward song called "Mad About the Boy" over and over again. it would then have been pointed out to him that he was only singing one note, to which he would have replied that for reasons that he hoped would be apparent, he was omitting the "About the Boy" bit. he was annoyed that nobody asked.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“La prima cosa da capire a proposito degli universi paralleli... è che non sono paralleli. È importante rendersi conto che, a rigore, non sono neppure universi, ma è molto più facile cercare di capirlo un po' più tardi, dopo che ci si è resi conto che tutto quello che si è capito fino a quel momento non è vero.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.” “Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.” “I did,” said Ford. “It is.” “So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?” “It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.” “You mean they actually vote for the lizards?” “Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.” “But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?” “Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“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.”
― 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

“Time is an illusion. Lunch-time doubly so.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Ah no,” he said, “I see the source of the misunderstanding now. No, look, you see what happened was that we used to do experiments on them. They were often used in behavioral research, Pavlov and all that sort of stuff. So what happened was that the mice would be set all sorts of tests, learning to ring bells, run round mazes and things so that the whole nature of the learning process could be examined. From our observations of their behavior we were able to learn all sorts of things about our own …” Arthur’s voice trailed off. “Such subtlety …” said Slartibartfast, “one has to admire it.” “What?” said Arthur. “How better to disguise their real natures, and how better to guide your thinking. Suddenly running down a maze the wrong way, eating the wrong bit of cheese, unexpectedly dropping dead of myxomatosis. If it’s finely calculated the cumulative effect is enormous.” He paused for effect. “You see, Earthman, they really are particularly clever hyper-intelligent pandimensional beings. Your planet and people have formed the matrix of an organic computer running a ten-million-year research program…. Let me tell you the whole story.”
― 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

“elegant gazelle-like creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“When I was a kid,'' she said. ``These sort of stories always start like this, don't they, `When I was a kid ...' Anyway. This is the bit where the girl suddenly says, `When I was a kid' and starts to unburden herself. We have got to that bit. When I was a kid I had this picture hanging over the foot of my bed ... What do you think of it so far?''

``I like it. I think it's moving well. You're getting the bedroom interest in nice and early. We could probably do with some development with the picture.''

``It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like,'' she said, ``but don't. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?''

``I know. I was plagued with them too. Rabbits in waistcoats.''

``Exactly. These rabbits were in fact on a raft, as were assorted rats and owls. There may even have been a reindeer.''

``On the raft.''

``On the raft. And a boy was sitting on the raft.''

``Among the rabbits in waistcoats and the owls and the reindeer.''

``Precisely there. A boy of the cheery gypsy ragamuffin variety.''

``Ugh.''

``The picture worried me, I must say. There was an otter swimming in front of the raft, and I used to lie awake at night worrying about this otter having to pull the raft, with all these wretched animals on it who shouldn't even be on a raft, and the otter had such a thin tail to pull it with I thought it must hurt pulling it all the time. Worried me. Not badly, but just vaguely, all the time.

``Then one day --- and remember I'd been looking at this picture every night for years --- I suddenly noticed that the raft had a sail. Never seen it before. The otter was fine, he was just swimming along.''

She shrugged.

``Good story?'' she said.

``Ends weakly,'' said Arthur, ``leaves the audience crying `Yes, but what of it?' Fine up till there, but needs a final sting before the credits.''

Fenchurch laughed and hugged her legs.

``It was just such a sudden revelation, years of almost unnoticed worry just dropping away, like taking off heavy weights, like black and white becoming colour, like a dry stick suddenly being watered. The sudden shift of perspective that says `Put away your worries, the world is a good and perfect place. It is in fact very easy.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“The Babel fish,’ said The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy quietly, ‘is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It's just that in your case the consequences of not knowing any of this stuff are particularly terrible, but then, hey, that's just the way the cookie gets completely stomped on and obliterated.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“The hereditary Emperor is nearly dead and has been for many centuries. In the last moments of his dying coma he was locked in a stasis field which keeps him in a state of perpetual unchangingness. All his heirs are now long dead, and this means that without any drastic political upheaval, power has simply and effectively moved a rung or two down the ladder, and is now seen to be vested in a body that used to act simply as advisers to the Emperor—an elected governmental assembly headed by a President elected by that assembly. In fact it vests in no such place. The President in particular is very much a figurehead—he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had—he has already spent two of his ten presidential years in prison for fraud. Very very few people realize that the President and the Government have virtually no power at all, and of these few people only six know whence ultimate political power is wielded. Most of the others secretly believe that the ultimate decision-making process is handled by a computer. They couldn’t be more wrong.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“deciding that just as discretion was the better part of valor, so was cowardice the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“I have been listening,” said Arthur, “but I’m not sure it’s helped.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He continued to lie there, like someone lying awake at four o’clock in the morning, unable to put his mind to rest, but unable to find anything to do with it.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“A quick change of magnification brought them into close focus—two massively real rockets thundering through the sky. The suddenness of it was shocking.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy