Douglas Adams > Quotes

“Bir şeyi görmeniz onun orada olduğu anlamına gelmediği gibi, bir şeyi görmemeniz onun orada olmadığı anlamına gelmez.

Just like seeing something doesn't mean it's there, not seeing something doesn't mean it isn't there.

Wie bedeutet nicht etwas zu schauen, dass es da ist; etwas zu nicht schauen bedeutet nicht, dass es nicht da ist.”
― Douglas Adams

“The ground had caved in where the whale had hit it, revealing a network of galleries and passages, now largely obstructed by collapsed rubble and entrails.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“They were not the same eyes with which he had last looked at this particular scene, and the brain which interpreted the images the eyes resolved was not the same brain. There had been no surgery involved, just he continual wrenching of experience.”
― Douglas Adams

“At some distance down the corridor it seemed suddenly as if somebody started to beat on a bass drum.

He listened to it for a few seconds and realized that it was just his heart beating.

He listened for a few seconds more and realized that it wasn’t his heart beating, it was somebody down the corridor beating on a bass drum.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Even supposing this was the home of some ancient civilization now gone to dust, even supposing a number of exceedingly unlikely things, there was no way that vast treasures of wealth were going to be stored there in any form that would still have meaning now. He shrugged. “I think it’s just a dead planet,” he said.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“La storia di tutte le maggiori civiltà galattiche tende ad attraversare tre fasi distinte ben riconoscibili, ovvero le fasi della Sopravvivenza, della Riflessione e della Decadenza, altrimenti dette fasi del Come, del Perché e del Dove. La prima fase, per esempio, è caratterizzata dalla domanda 'Come facciamo a procurarci da mangiare?', la seconda dalla domanda 'Perché mangiamo?' e la terza dalla domanda 'In quale ristorante pranziamo oggi?”
― Douglas Adams, Guida galattica per gli autostoppisti

“Arthur didn’t notice that the men were running from the bulldozers; he didn’t notice that Mr. Prosser was staring hectically into the sky. What Mr. Prosser had noticed was that huge yellow somethings were screaming through the clouds. Impossibly huge yellow somethings. “And I will carry on jumping on them,” yelled Arthur, still running, “until I get blisters, or I can think of anything even more unpleasant to do, and then …”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Charitable, ah!" said Dirk. "I pay my taxes, what more do you want?”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer claimed to produce the widest possible range of drinks personally matched to the tastes and metabolism of whoever cared to use it. When put to test, however, it invariably produced a plastic cup filled with a liquid which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioral research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“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

“Arthur’s mind was beginning to reassemble itself from the shell-shocked fragments the previous day had left him with.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Tutto quel che, in qualsiasi forma, vedi, senti o provi è specifico di te. Tu crei un universo percependolo, sicché tutto quanto percepisci dell'universo è specifico di te”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“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. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was, Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He was not conspicuously tall, his features were striking but not conspicuously handsome.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Time is an illusion.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“they’re just a bunch of real sweet guys, you know, who just happen to want to kill everybody.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“I see", said Arthur Dent. He didn't.”
― Douglas Adams

“Look, don’t you understand?” shouted Arthur. He pointed at Prosser. “That man wants to knock my house down!” Ford glanced at him, puzzled. “Well, he can do it while you’re away, can’t he?” he asked. “But I don’t want him to!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“La guía dice que volar es un arte; o más bien un truco. El truco consiste en aprender a tirarse al suelo y fallar.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Eventually the last rays of the sun vanished completely, and he turned. His face was still illuminated from somewhere, and when Arthur looked for the source of the light he saw that a few yards away stood a small craft of some kind—a small Hovercraft, Arthur guessed. It shed a dim pool of light around it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings. The whole business with the cheese and the squeaking is just a front.” The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued. “They’ve been experimenting on you, I’m afraid.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I incline to the quantum mechanical view in this matter. My theory is that your cat is not lost, but that his waveform has temporarily collapsed and must be restored. Schrödinger. Planck. And so on.” Richard”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner’s Time Traveler’s Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations.
...
Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.
...
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term “Future Perfect” has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be. To resume:
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is one of the most extraordinary ventures in the entire history of catering. It is built on the fragmented remains of an eventually ruined planet which is (wioll haven be) enclosed in a vast time bubble and projected forward in time to the precise moment of the End of the Universe. This is, many would say, impossible. In it, guests take (willan on-take) their places at table and eat (willan on-eat) sumptuous meals while watching (willing watchen) the whole of creation explode around them.
This, many would say, is equally impossible.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Ah, shit,” he said, “you wake me up from my own perfectly good dream to show me somebody else’s.” He”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Many many millions of years ago a race of hyperintelligent pandimensional beings (whose physical manifestation in their own pandimensional universe is not dissimilar to our own) got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life which used to interrupt their favorite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away) that they decided to sit down and solve their problems once and for all. And to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer which was so amazingly intelligent that even before its data banks had been connected up it had started from I think therefore I am and got as far as deducing the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I want to make a headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let¡s call it my stomach.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“You barbarians!” he yelled. “I’ll sue the council for every penny it’s got! I’ll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled … until … until … until you’ve had enough.” Ford was running after him very fast. Very very fast. “And then I will do it again!” yelled Arthur. “And when I’ve finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It’s just that it’s a good idea not to let him have your phone number unless you possess an industrial-grade answering machine.” “What? Why’s that?” “Well, he’s one of those people who can only think when he’s talking. When he has ideas, he has to talk them out to whoever will listen. Or, if the people themselves are not available, which is increasingly the case, their answering machines will do just as well. He just phones them up and talks at them. He has one secretary whose sole job is to collect tapes from people he might have phoned, transcribe them, sort them and give him the edited text the next day in a blue folder.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency