Douglas Adams > Quotes

“The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as “Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun to Be With.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as “a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes,” with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Well, what we called a computer in 1977 was really a kind of electric abacus, but…” “Oh, now, don’t underestimate the abacus,” said Reg. “In skilled hands it’s a very sophisticated calculating device. Furthermore it requires no power, can be made with any materials you have to hand, and never goes bing in the middle of an important piece of work.” “So an electric one would be particularly pointless,” said Richard. “True enough,” conceded Reg.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“It looked insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words DON’T PANIC printed on it in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was in fact that most remarkable of all books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor—The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“What I lost, I think, was a whole other life."

"Everybody does that. Every moment of every day. Every single decision we make, every breath we draw, opens some doors and closes many others. Most of them we don't notice. Some we do. Sounds like you noticed one.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Povero me!’ dice Dio. ‘Non ci avevo pensato!’ e sparisce immediatamente in una nuvoletta di logica.
“‘Oh, com’è stato facile!’ dice l’Uomo, e, per fare il bis, passa a dimostrare che il nero è bianco, per poi finire ucciso sul primo attraversamento pedonale che successivamente incontra.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying. There is an art, it says, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss ... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Is it anything to do with this?” she said. The thing she took out of her bag was battered and travel-worn as if it had been hurled into prehistoric rivers, baked under the sun that shines so redly on the deserts of Kakrafoon, half buried in the marbled sands that fringe the heady vapored oceans of Santraginus V, frozen on the glaciers of the moon of Jaglan Beta, sat on, kicked around spaceships, scuffed and generally abused, and since its makers had thought that these were exactly the sorts of things that might happen to it, they had thoughtfully encased it in a sturdy plastic cover and written on it, in large friendly letters, the words “Don’t Panic.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has or rather had a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Sempre há um momento em que você começa a se desapaixonar, seja por uma pessoa ou uma ideia ou uma causa, mesmo que seja um momento que você só narra para si mesmo anos após o acontecimento: uma coisinha pequena, uma palavra errada, uma nota desafinada, que significa que as coisas nunca mais serão exatamente as mesmas.”
― Douglas Adams

“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, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost for ever. This is not her story.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“He felt a tug of sadness that someone who had seemed so shiningly alive within the small confines of a university community should have seemed to fade so much in the light of common day.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“what about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project.” “Ah,” said the marketing girl, “well, we’re having a little difficulty there.” “Difficulty?” exclaimed Ford. “Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It’s the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!” The marketing girl soured him with a look “All right, Mr. Wiseguy,” she said, “you’re so clever, you tell us what color it should be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation hold its breath.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“In fact I wanted to be John Cleese and it took me some time to realise that the job was in fact taken.” At”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one – more popular than The Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see in infrared,
How I hate the night.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Come,’ called the old man, ‘come now or you will be late.’ ‘Late?’ said Arthur. ‘What for?’ ‘What is your name, human?’ ‘Dent. Arthur Dent,’ said Arthur. ‘Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent,’ said the old man, sternly. ‘It’s a sort of threat you see.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“Non è sufficiente credere alla bellezza di un giardino? Che bisogno c'è di credere che nasconda delle fate?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Does the number,” said Arthur gently, “forty-two mean anything to you at all?” “What? No, what are you talking about?” exclaimed Fenchurch.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“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

“Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy