Douglas Adams > Quotes

“On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards role 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 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.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“She was of course the last person to judge somebody by the color of their skin - or if not absolutely the last, she had at least done it as recently as yesterday afternoon /.../”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living 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

“The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79. In”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Arthur alzò gli occhi.
“Ford!” disse “qui fuori c’è un’incredibile moltitudine di scimmie che vogliono parlarci di una sceneggiatura dell’Amleto che avrebbero appena finito di scrivere!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Don’t blame you,” said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven billion sheep before falling asleep again a second later.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Yes. Five minutes later and it wouldn’t have mattered so much. It was a quite shocking cock-up.” “Huh?” said Arthur. “The mice were furious.” “The mice were furious?” “Oh yes,” said the old man mildly. “Yes, well, so I expect were the dogs and cats and duck-billed platypuses, but . . .” “Ah, but they hadn’t paid for it, you see, had they?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.” “And are you?” “No. That’s where it all falls down, of course.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Ford slapped a five-pound note on the bar. He said, “Keep the change.” “What, from a fiver? Thank you, sir.” “You’ve got ten minutes left to spend it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Arthur felt extraordinarily lonely stuck up in the air above it all without so much as a body to his name, but before he had time to reflect on this a voice rang out across the square and called for everyone’s attention. A man standing on a brightly dressed dais before the building which clearly dominated the square was addressing the crowd over a tannoy “O people who wait in the shadow of Deep Thought!” he cried out. “Honored Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the Greatest and Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe has ever known, the Time of Waiting is over!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“But by an extraordinarily lucky chance they had not yet fully corrected their flight paths to that of the erratically weaving ship, and they passed right under it. “And the sweet silver song of the lark.’… Revised impact time fifteen seconds, fellas…. ‘Walk on through the wind …”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Bir şey olacaksa, olacaktır...
Herhangi bir şey ortaya çıkarken bir şeyi ortaya çıkıyorsa, bir başka şeyin ortaya çıkmasına neden oluyor demektir...
O şey her neyse, olurken, kendi kendisinin yeniden ortaya çıkmasına sebep oluyorsa, tekrar olacaktır...
Bununla birlikte, kronolojik bir sıra izlenmesi şart değildir.”
― Douglas Adams, Otostopçu'nun Galaksi Rehberi

“The alien ship was already thundering towards the upper reaches of the atmosphere, on its way out into the appalling void which separates the very few things there are in the Universe from each other.

Its occupant, the alien with the expensive complexion, leaned back in its single seat. His name was Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. He was a man with a purpose. Not a very good purpose, as he would have been the first to admit, but it was at least a purpose and it did at least keep him on the move.

Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was --- indeed, is --- one of the Universe's very small number of immortal beings.

Those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed he had come to hate them, the load of serene bastards. He had had his immortality thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands. The precise details of the accident are not important because no one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both, trying.

Wowbagger closed his eyes in a grim and weary expression, put some light jazz on the ship's stereo, and reflected that he could have made it if it hadn't been for Sunday afternoons, he really could have done.

To begin with it was fun, he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks, cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving the hell out of everybody.

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

So things began to pall for him. The merry smiles he used to wear at other people's funerals began to fade. He began to despise the Universe in general, and everyone in it in particular.

This was the point at which he conceived his purpose, the thing which would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on forever. It was this.

He would insult the Universe.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Life', said Marvin, 'don't talk to me about life”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Hexagonal Phase

“This must be Thursday,’ said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer, ‘I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“This planet has—or rather had—a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Hexagonal Phase

“Aveva pensato che se gli esseri umani non si esercitavano in continuazione ad aprire e chiudere la bocca, correvano il rischio di cominciare a far lavorare il cervello.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Then who is it?” said Arthur. “Well,” said Ford, “if we’re lucky it’s just the Vogons come to throw us in to space.” “And if we’re unlucky?” “If we’re unlucky,” said Ford grimly, “the captain might be serious in his threat that he’s going to read us some of his poetry first….”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Fe is, I could bang on about the desert and the altitude and the light and the silver and turquoise jewelry, but the best thing is just to mention a traffic sign on the freeway from Albuquerque. It says, in large letters, GUSTY WINDS, and in smaller letters MAY EXIST.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is “Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? Because you’re not!”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“La scienza ha raggiunto traguardi meravigliosi, certo, ma io preferirei essere felice piuttosto che avere sempre ragione.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Zaphod's attention however was elsewhere. His attention was riveted on the ship standing next to Hotblack Desiato's limo. His mouths hung open.
"That," he said, "that ... is really bad for the eyes ..."
Ford looked. He too stood astonished.
It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened salmon, twenty yards long, very clean, very sleek. There was just one remarkable thing about it.
"It's so ... black!" said Ford Prefect, "you can hardly make out its shape ... light just seems to fall into it!"
Zaphod said nothing. He had simply fallen in love.
The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost impossible to tell how close you were standing to it.
"Your eyes just slide off it ..." said Ford in wonder. It was an emotional moment. He bit his lip.
Zaphod moved forward to it, slowly, like a man possessed - or more accurately like a man who wanted to possess. His hand reached out to stroke it. His hand stopped. His hand reached out to stroke it again. His hand stopped again.
"Come and feel the surface," he said in a hushed voice.
Ford put his hand out to feel it. His hand stopped.
"You ... you can't ..." he said.
"See?" said Zaphod, "it's just totally frictionless. This must be one mother of a mover ..."
He turned to look at Ford seriously. At least, one of his heads did - the other stayed gazing in awe at the ship.
"What do you reckon, Ford?" he said.
"You mean ... er ..." Ford looked over his shoulder. "You mean stroll off with it? You think we should?"
"No."
"Nor do I."
"But we're going to, aren't we?"
"How can we not?”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“A scientist must 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.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“On the way back they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“And that’s why the American habit of bringing a teacup, a tea bag, and a pot of hot water to the table is merely the perfect way of making a thin, pale, watery cup of tea that nobody in their right mind would want to drink.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“Ten million years, Earthman . . . can you conceive of that kind of time span? A galactic civilization could grow from a single worm five times over in that time. Gone.’ He paused.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I was a row of dots flowing randomly through the Universe. Have you met Thor? He makes thunder.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

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

“But can we trust him?’ he said. ‘Myself, I’d trust him to the end of the Earth,’ said Ford. ‘Oh yes,’ said Arthur, ‘and how far’s that?’ ‘About twelve minutes away,’ said Ford. ‘Come on, I need a drink.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy