Douglas Adams > Quotes

“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

“A quick change of magnification brought them into close focus—two massively real rockets thundering through the sky. The suddenness of it was shocking.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“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