Douglas Adams > Quotes

“Space,” it says, “is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“We called ourselves The Reasonably Good Band, but in fact we weren't. Our intention was to be the Beatles of the early eighties, but we got much better financial and legal advice than the Beatles ever did, which was basically 'Don't bother,' so we didn't. I left Cambridge and starved for three years.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Well, what do you think?” said Ford. “It’s a bit squalid, isn’t it?” Ford frowned at the grubby mattresses, unwashed cups and unidentifiable bits of smelly alien underwear that lay around the cramped cabin. “Well, this is a working ship, you see,” said Ford. “These are the Dentrassis’ sleeping quarters.” “I thought you said they were called Vogons or something.” “Yes,” said Ford, “the Vogons run the ship, the Dentrassis are the cooks; they let us on board.” “I’m confused,” said Arthur. “Here, have a look at this,” said Ford. He sat down on one of the mattresses and rummaged about in his satchel. Arthur prodded the mattress nervously and then sat on it himself: in fact he had very little to be nervous about, because all mattresses grown in the swamps of Sqornshellous Zeta are very thoroughly killed and dried before being put to service. Very few have ever come to life again.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It would be interesting to keep a running log of predictions and see if we can spot the absolute corkers when they are still just pert little buds. One such that I spotted recently was a statement made in February by a Mr. Wayne Leuck, vice-president of engineering at USWest, the American phone company. Arguing against the deployment of high-speed wireless data connections, he said, “Granted, you could use it in your car going sixty miles an hour, but I don’t think too many people are going to be doing that.” Just watch. That’s a statement that will come back to haunt him.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Look,’ said Arthur, ‘would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“And what's happened to the Earth?"
"Ah. It's been demolished."
"Has is," said Arthur levelly.
"Yes. It just boiled away into space."
"Look," said Arthur, "I'm a bit upset about that."
Ford frowned to himself and seemed to roll the thought around his mind.
"Yes, I can understand that," he said at last.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“He continued: “I should warn you that the chamber we are about to pass into does not literally exist within our planet. It is a little too … large. We are about to pass through a gateway into a vast tract of hyperspace. It may disturb you.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“This is terrific,” Arthur thought to himself, “Nelson’s Column has gone, McDonald’s has gone, all that’s left is me and the words Mostly harmless. Any second now all that will be left is Mostly harmless. And yesterday the planet seemed to be going so well.” A”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The party blundered helplessly across the sky like a man leaning against an unexpectedly open door. It spun and wobbled on its hover jets. It tried to right itself and wronged itself instead.”
― Douglas Adams

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

“brought together not of their own volition or by simple coincidence, but by some curious perversion of physics—as if relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the relationships between atoms and molecules.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of.”
― Douglas Adams

“*If the snake people don't vote, the wrong lizard will get in!*”
― Douglas Adams

“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. “Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Things hit a limit, though, when I was set upon by a pickpocket in a baker's shop. I didn't notice that I was being set upon by a pickpocket, which I am glad of, because I like to work only with professionals.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“I shall sit alone in a darkened room, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything but a little grey old head, and in that little grey old head a peculiar vision of hideous blue and gold dangling things flashing in the light, and the smell of sweat, cat food and death.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“So I reckon, what’s so secret that I can’t let anybody know I know it, not the Galactic Government, not even myself? And the answer is I don’t know. Obviously. But I put a few things together and I can begin to guess. When did I decide to run for President? Shortly after the death of President Yooden Vranx.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Acontecimientos importantes de la Historia de la Galaxia, II:
Desde los orígenes de esta Galaxia, grandes civilizaciones han surgido y desaparecido y muerto tan a menudo que resulta profundamente tentador pensar que la vida en ella debe ser
a) algo así como un mareo, un vértigo en el espacio, en el tiempo, en la historia o cosa parecida, y
b) estúpida.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“The scientists chaps had been very insistent that everything was going to be perfectly all right providing nobody panicked and everybody got on and did their bit in an orderly fashion.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The thing that used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was looking so worried”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know becasue you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, 'as pretty as an airport.' Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that, were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in some extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech and writing is seen as evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed and totally un****ed-up personality”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Perhaps I’m old and tired,’ he continued, ‘but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“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

“He suddenly remembered the tape he had taken from Susan’s answering machine, and hoped to God there wasn’t anything more important in Gordon’s message than ravings about rabbits.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“It’s difficult to say exactly what the people on the surface of the planet were doing now, because they didn’t really know what they were doing themselves. None of it made a lot of sense— running into houses, running out of houses, howling noiselessly at the noise. All around the world city streets exploded with people, cars skidded into each other as the noise fell on them and then rolled off like a tidal wave over hills and valleys, deserts and oceans, seeming to flatten everything it hit.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy