Douglas Adams > Quotes

“The three billion people weren’t actually there, but they watched his every gesture through the eyes of a small robot tri-D camera which hovered obsequiously in the air nearby.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Any form of transport which involved tearing you apart atom by atom, flinging those atoms through the subether, and then jamming them back together again just when they were getting their first taste of freedom for years had to be bad news.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most 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.”
― Douglas Adams, Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Book 2 of 3

“I don’t want to die now!” he yelled. “I’ve still got a headache! I don’t want to go to heaven with a headache, I’d be all cross and wouldn’t enjoy it!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Some factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?” “How much?” said Arthur. “None at all,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“That young girl,’ he added unexpectedly, ‘is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Evolution? they said to themselves, Who needs it?,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The Belcerebon people used to cause great resentment and insecurity amongst neighbouring races by being one of the most enlightened, accomplished, and above all quiet civilizations in the Galaxy.
As a punishment for this behaviour, which was held to be offensively self-righteous and provocative, a galactic tribunal inflicted on them that most cruel of all social diseases, telepathy. Consequently, in order to prevent themselves broadcasting every slightest thought that crosses their minds to anyone within a five-mile radius, they now have to talk very loudly and continuously about the weather, their little aches and pains, the match this afternoon and what a noisy place Kakrafoon has suddenly become.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Once again," he said, "we have failed pathetically. Quite pathetically."
"That," said Ford quietly, "is because we don't care enough. I told you."
He swung his feet up onto the intrument panel and picked fitfully at something on one of his fingernails.
"But unless we determine to take action," said the old man querulously, as if struggling against something deeply insouciant in his nature, "then we shall be destroyed; we shall all die. Surely we care about that?"
"Not enough to want to get killed over it," said Ford. He put on a sort of hollow smile and flipped it around the room at anyone who wanted to see it.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive—you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The waiter smiled a polite little waiter’s smile. He had almost exhausted his polite little waiter repertoire and would soon be slipping into his role of a rather tight-lipped and sarcastic little waiter.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“We like to be on one side, and look at the other.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“There is no problem so complicated that you can’t find a very simple answer to it if you look at it the right way.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“Marvin," dedi Trillian, yalnızca bu can sıkıcı varlıkla konuşurken kullandığı yumuşak ve nazik ses tonuyla, "madem bu kadar zamandır biliyordun, bize neden söylemedin?"
Marvin başını arkaya, ona doğru çevirdi.
"Sormadınız ki?" dedi basitçe.”
― Douglas Adams, Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Book 1 of 3

“And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“On Earth—when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass—the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm’s way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another—particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e., covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“–Ese Dios vuestro pone un manzano en medio de un jardín y dice: haced lo que queráis, chicos, pero de ningún modo comáis la manzana. Pero, sorpresa, se la comen y Él salta de detrás de un arbusto diciendo: «¡Os pillé!» Si no se la hubieran comido, habría dado lo mismo. –¿Por qué? –Porque si uno anda en tratos con alguien que tiene la mentalidad del que deja sombreros en la acera con ladrillos dentro, hay que tener la plena seguridad de que nunca abandonará su empeño. Al final terminará cazándote. –Pero ¿de qué hablas? –No importa, cómete la fruta.”
― Douglas Adams, Los autoestopistas galácticos: Guía del autoestopista galáctico, El restaurante del fin del mundo, La vida, el universo y todo lo demás

“Do you think they’re…”

“Where they are, how they are, there’s no way we can know and no way we can do anything about it. Do what I do.”

“What?”

“Don’t think about it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The 'guide' is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.”
― Douglas Adams

“Arthur,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“the Worst Dressed Sentient Being in the Known Universe”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Hey, is there something in this water?’ he said. ‘Er, no, m’lud,’ said the Court Usher who had brought it to him, rather nervously. ‘Then take it away,’ snapped Judiciary Pag, ‘and put something in it. I got an idea.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

“What a strange book. How did we get a lift then?” “That’s the point, it’s out of date now,” said Ford, sliding the book back into its cover. “I’m doing the field research for the new revised edition, and one of the things I’ll have to do is include a bit about how the Vogons now employ Dentrassi cooks, which gives us a rather useful little loophole.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He returned to lie on his bed, and turned out the light. He lay still and quiet. He absorbed the enveloping darkness, slowly relaxed his limbs from end to end, eased and regulated his breathing, gradually cleared his mind of all thought, closed his eyes, and was completely incapable of getting to sleep.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“We live in strange times. We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universes are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own. Being able to glance out into this bewildering complexity of infinite recursion and say things like, “Oh, hi, Ed! Nice tan. How’s Carol?” involves a great deal of filtering skill for which all conscious entities have eventually to develop a capacity in order to protect themselves from the contemplation of the chaos through which they seethe and tumble.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Magrathea itself disappeared and its memory soon passed into the obscurity of legend. In these enlightened days, of course, no one believes a word of”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.” “Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.” “I did,” said Ford. “It is.” “So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?” “It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.” “You mean they actually vote for the lizards?” “Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.” “But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?” “Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“little green person, my stomach could take you home and cuddle you all night for the mere idea.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“He was staring at the instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert Fahrenheit to centigrade in his head while his house is burning down.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy