Douglas Adams > Quotes

“which is why he always concealed them”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It’s a nice day, or You’re very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behavior. If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried about the terrible number of things they didn’t know about. “Yes,” he agreed with”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“All right,” said Ford, “just stop panicking!”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“To those who said that they had a feeling soap wasn't found in mines, the Captain had ventured to suggest that perhaps that was because no one had looked hard enough, and this possibility had been reluctantly acknowledged.”
― Douglas Adams

“Miró fijamente los instrumentos con el aire de quien intentara pasar de memoria de la escala Fahrenheit a la centígrada mientras la casa está en llamas.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“So, how are you?” he said aloud. “Oh, fine,” said Marvin, “if you happen to like being me, which personally I don’t.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“What's up?"
"I don't know," said Marvin. "I've never been there.”
― Douglas Adams

“Some people object to such a view of music, saying that if you reduce music to mathematics, where does the emotion come into it? I would say that it’s never been out of it. The things by which our emotions can be moved—the shape of a flower or a Grecian urn, the way a baby grows, the way the wind brushes across your face, the way clouds move, their shapes, the way light dances on the water, or daffodils flutter in the breeze, the way in which the person you love moves their head, the way their hair follows that movement, the curve described by the dying fall of the last chord of a piece of music—all these things can be described by the complex flow of numbers. That’s not a reduction of it, that’s the beauty of it. Ask Newton. Ask Einstein. Ask the poet (Keats) who said that what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“No, I’m very ordinary,’ said Arthur, ‘but some very strange things have happened to me. You could say I’m more differed from than differing.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

“They both sat on the pavement and watched with a certain unease as huge children bounced heavily along the sand and wild horses thundered through the sky taking fresh supplies of reinforced railings to the Uncertain Areas.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself.” “Hang on, can I write this down?” said Arthur, excitedly fumbling in his pocket for a pencil. “You can pick up a copy at the spaceport,” said the old man. “They’ve got racks of the stuff.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational ethics and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Then Frankie said: ‘Here’s a thought. How many roads must a man walk down?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Don’t stand there looking like a startled whatsisname, what are those things that aren’t seals? Much worse than seals. Big, blubbery things. Dugongs. Don’t stand there looking like a startled dugong. Why has that . . .”
― 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

“It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons. Curiously”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“İnsan Evrende ne kadar daha hızlı ve ne kadar uzağa giderse Evrendeki yeri de o kadar önemsiz görünüyor.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“It seemed somehow unnaturally dark and silent, even for a ship whose two-man crew was at that moment lying asphyxicated in a smoke-filled chamber several miles beneath the ground. It is one of those curious things that is impossible to explain or define, but one can sense when a ship is completely dead.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“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.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“Who can possibly rule, if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Mathematical analysis and computer modelling are revealing to us that the shapes and processes we encounter in nature -the way that plants grow, the way that mountains erode or rivers flow, the way that snowflakes or islands achieve their shapes, the way that light plays on a surface, the way the milk folds and spins into your coffee as you stir it, the way that laughter sweeps through a crowd of people — all these things in their seemingly magical complexity can be described by the interaction of mathematical processes that are, if anything, even more magical in their simplicity. Shapes that we think of as random are in fact the products of complex shifting webs of numbers obeying simple rules. The very word “natural” that we have often taken to mean ”unstructured” in fact describes shapes and processes that appear so unfathomably complex that we cannot consciously perceive the simple natural laws at work.They can all be described by numbers.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“You’re crazy, Zaphod,’ he was saying, ‘Magrathea is a myth, a fairy story, it’s what parents tell their kids about at night if they want them to grow up to become economists, it’s . .”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

“Non tout baigne, tout ce qui est susceptible de biagner, baigne.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“THIS TIME THERE would be no witnesses.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Ah, a vida - disse Marvin, lúgubre. - Pode-se odiá-la ou ignorá-la, mas é impossível gostar dela.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“How to Leave the Planet 1. Phone NASA. Their phone number is (713) 483-3111. Explain that it’s very important that you get away as soon as possible. 2. If they do not cooperate, phone any friend you may have in the White House—(202) 456-1414—to have a word on your behalf with the guys at NASA. 3. If you don’t have any friends in the White House, phone the Kremlin (ask the overseas operator for 0107-095-295-9051). They don’t have any friends there either (at least, none to speak of), but they do seem to have a little influence, so you may as well try. 4. If that also fails, phone the Pope for guidance. His telephone number is 011-39-6-6982, and I gather his switchboard is infallible. 5. If all these attempts fail, flag down a passing flying saucer and explain that it’s vitally important you get away before your phone bill arrives. Douglas Adams Los Angeles 1983 and London 1985/1986”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He hadn’t realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice that brings you answers to the questions you continually ask of it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones until it now said something it had never said to him before, which was “yes.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“once you know what it is you want to be true, instinct is a very useful device for enabling you to know that it is.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It was a charming and delightful day at Lord's as Ford and Arthur tumbled haphazardly out of a space-time anomaly and hit the immaculate turf rather hard.
The applause of the crowd was tremendous. It wasn't for them, but instinctively they bowed anyway, which was fortunate because the small red heavy ball which the crowd actually had been applauding whistled mere millimetres over Arthur's head. In the crowd a man collapsed.
They threw themselves back to the ground which seemed to spin hideously around them.
"What was that?" hissed Arthur.
"Something red," hissed Ford back at him.
"Where are we?"
"Er, somewhere green."
"Shapes," muttered Arthur. "I need shapes."
The applause of the crowd had been rapidly succeeded by gasps of astonishment, and the awkward titters of hundreds of people who could not yet make up their minds about whether to believe what they had just seen or not.
"This your sofa?" said a voice.
"What was that?" whispered Ford.
Arthur looked up.
"Something blue," he said.
"Shape?" said Ford.
Arthur looked again.
"It is shaped," he hissed at Ford, with his brow savagely furrowing, "like a policeman."
They remained crouched there for a few moments, frowning deeply. The blue thing shaped like a policeman tapped them both on the shoulders.
"Come on, you two," the shape said, "let's be having you."
These words had an electrifying effect on Arthur. He leapt to his feet like an author hearing the phone ring and shot a series of startled glanced at the panorama around him which had suddenly settled down into something of quite terrifying ordinariness.
"Where did you get this from?" he yelled at the policeman shape.
"What did you say?" said the startled shape.
"This is Lord's Cricket Ground, isn't it?" snapped Arthur. "Where did you find it, how did you get it here? I think," he added, clasping his hand to his brow, "that I had better calm down." He squatted down abruptly in front of Ford.
"It is a policeman," he said, "What do we do?"
Ford shrugged.
"What do you want to do?" he said.
"I want you," said Arthur, "to tell me that I have been dreaming for the last five years."
Ford shrugged again, and obliged.
"You've been dreaming for the last five years," he said.
Arthur got to his feet.
"It's all right, officer," he said. "I've been dreaming for the last five years. Ask him," he added, pointing at Ford, "he was in it.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything