Douglas Adams > Quotes

“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

“Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don’t get up and go to work?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“If I ever meet myself,” said Zaphod, “I’ll hit myself so hard I won’t know what’s hit me.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“There really wasn’t a lot this machine could do that you couldn’t do yourself in half the time with a lot less trouble,” said Richard, “but it was, on the other hand, very good at being a slow and dim-witted pupil.” Reg looked at him quizzically. “I had no idea they were supposed to be in short supply,” he said. “I could hit a dozen with a bread roll from where I’m sitting.” “I’m sure. But look at it this way. What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?” This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table. Richard continued, “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. The teacher usually learns more than the pupil. Isn’t that true?”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Such music", he said. "I'm not religious, but if I were I would say it was like a glimpse into the mind of God. Perhaps it was and i ought to be religious. I have to keep reminding myself that they didn't create the music, they only created the instrument which could read the score. And the score was life itself. And it's all up there".”
― Douglas Adams

“Non è sufficiente godere della bellezza di un giardino? Che bisogno c'è di credere che sia segretamente abitato dalle fate?”
― Douglas Adams, Guida galattica per gli autostoppisti

“Anything that happens, happens.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.
Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Sensational new breakthrough in Improbability Physics. As soon as the ship’s drive reaches Infinite Improbability it passes through every point in the Universe. Be the envy of other major governments.’ Wow, this is big league stuff.” Ford hunted excitedly through the technical specs of the ship, occasionally gasping with astonishment at what he read— clearly Galactic astrotechnology had moved ahead during the years of his exile.”
― Douglas Adams, The 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.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept it,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“As she lay beneath a pile of rubble, in pain, darkness, and choking dust, trying to find sensation in her limbs, she was at least relieved to be able to think that she hadn't merely been imagining that this was a bad day. So thinking, she passed out.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Ford,’ he said, ‘you’re turning into a penguin. Stop it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five