Douglas Adams > Quotes

“Das Leben", sagte Marvin schwermütig, "hasse oder ignoriere es, lieben kannst du's nicht.”
― Douglas Adams, Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis/Das Restaurant am Ende des Universums

“It had a note from him pinned to part of its sparse instrument panel. The note had an arrow drawn on it, pointing at one of the controls. It said This is probably the best button to press.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“but there comes a point I’m afraid where you begin to suspect that if there’s any real truth, it’s that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Out,” he said. People who can supply that amount of firepower don’t need to supply verbs as well.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“A second later and they would have been dead.” “Yeah, so if you’d taken the trouble to think about the problem a bit longer it would have gone away.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Vogon Constructor Fleets. Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy—not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The new bill reads ‘To: saving human race from total extinction—no charge.’ ”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“It’s only half completed, I’m afraid—we haven’t even finished burying the artificial dinosaur skeletons in the crust”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“But naturally my shoulder, sir,’ mooed the animal contentedly, ‘nobody else’s is mine to offer.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“We’re safe,” he said. “Oh good,” said Arthur. “We’re in a small galley cabin,” said Ford, “in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.” “Ah,” said Arthur, “this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn’t previously aware of.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“They were late and shook off their coats hurriedly. This was complicated for the older man by the necessity first of taking off his professorial gown, and then of putting it back on again once his coat was off, then of stuffing his hat in his coat pocket, then of wondering where he’d put his scarf, and then of realizing that he hadn’t brought it, then of fishing in his coat pocket for his handkerchief, then of fishing in his other coat pocket for his spectacles, and finally of finding them quite unexpectedly wrapped in his scarf, which it turned out he had brought after all but hadn’t been wearing despite the damp and bitter wind blowing in like a witch’s breath from across the fens. He”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Anything that is put down wrong here is, as far as I’m concerned, wrong for good.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Why doesn’t anyone turn on this Improbability Drive thing?” he said. “We could probably reach that.” “What are you, crazy?” said Zaphod. “Without proper programming anything could happen.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“And the messenger did understand the Reason, and he returned to his people in the Forest. But as he approached them, as he walked through the Forest and amongst the trees, he found that all he could remember of the Reason was how terribly clear the argument had seemed. What it actually was he couldn't remember at all.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“And thirdly,” he said, “thirdly a party of Young Conservatives from Sirius B, are they here?” A party of smartly dressed young dogs stopped throwing rolls at each other and started throwing rolls at the stage. They yapped and barked unintelligibly.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The sweat stood out cold on Ford Prefect’s brow, and slid round the electrodes strapped to his temples. These were attached to a battery of electronic equipment—imagery intensifiers, rhythmic modulators, alliterative residulators and simile dumpers—all designed to heighten the experience of the poem and make sure that not a single nuance of the poet’s thought was lost.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Five wild Event Maelstroms swirled in vicious storms of unreason and spewed up a pavement.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Impact minus twenty seconds, guys …” said the computer. “Then turn the bloody engines back on!” bawled Zaphod. “Oh, sure thing, guys,” said the computer. With a subtle roar the engines cut back in, the ship smoothly flattened out of its dive and headed back toward the missiles again.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. To explain—since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation—every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake. The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. Trin”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Marvin regarded it with cold loathing while his logic circuits chattered with disgust and tinkered with the concept of directing physical violence against it. Further circuits cut in saying, Why bother? What’s the point? Nothing is worth getting involved in. Further circuits amused themselves by analyzing the molecular components of the door, and of the humanoids’ brain cells. For a quick encore they measured the level of hydrogen emissions in the surrounding cubic parsec of space and then shut down again in boredom. A spasm of despair shook the robot’s body as he turned.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“They believe in “peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms”.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“Computer, what evasive action can we take?” “Er, none, I’m afraid, guys,” said the computer. “Or something,” said Zaphod, “… er …” he said. “There seems to be something jamming my guidance systems,” explained the computer brightly, “impact minus forty-five seconds. Please call me Eddie if it will help you to relax.” Zaphod tried to run in several equally decisive directions simultaneously. “Right!” he said. “Er … we’ve got to get manual control of this ship.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It said that the major activities pursued on NowWhat were those of catching, skinning, and eating of the NowWhattian boghogs, which were the only extant form of animal life on NowWhat, all other having died long ago of despair. The boghogs were tiny, vicious creatures, and the small margin by which they fell short of being completely inedible was the margin by which life on the planet subsisted. So what were the rewards, however small, that made life on NowWhat worth living? Well, there weren’t any. Not a one. Even making yourself some protective clothing out of boghog skins was an exercise in disappointment and futility, since the skins were unaccountably thin and leaky. This caused a lot of puzzled conjecture amongst the settlers. What was the boghog’s secret of keeping warm? If anyone had ever learnt the language the boghogs spoke to each other they would have realized that there was no trick. The boghogs were as cold and wet as anyone else on the planet.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Today was also his two-hundredth birthday, but that was just another meaningless coincidence.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“And do we also have, do we have … a party of minor deities from the Halls of Asgard?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy