Douglas Adams > Quotes

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

“But nobody’s ever been to look or search or rescue. There’s been absolutely nothing.” “Well, there wouldn’t be. It’s a whole complicated insurance thing. They just bury the whole thing. Pretend it never happened. The insurance business is completely screwy now. You know they’ve reintroduced the death penalty for insurance company directors?” “Really?” said Arthur. “No, I didn’t. For what offense?” Trillian frowned. “What do you mean, offense?” “I see.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same reasons.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can’t cope with.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I hoped that if someone tried to feed the remote descendant of a goat to the remote descendant of a lizard for the sake of little more than a shudder of entertainment, that it would feel it was wrong. I hoped it wouldn't be too chicken to say so.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“He’s spending a year dead for tax reasons. I’ve got to sit down.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

“One of those nasty hushes had descended on the place, a sort of missile crisis sort of hush. Even”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself. Take the juice from one bottle of the Ol’ Janx Spirit, it says. Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V—Oh, that Santraginean seawater, it says. Oh, those Santraginean fish! Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the mixture (it must be properly iced or the benzine is lost). Allow four liters of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it, in memory of all those happy hikers who have died of pleasure in the Marshes of Fallia. Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin Hyper-mintextract, redolent of all the heady odors of the dark Qualactin Zones, subtle, sweet and mystic. Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve, spreading the fires of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of the drink. Sprinkle Zamphuor. Add an olive. Drink . . . but . . . very carefully . . . The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sells rather better than the Encyclopedia Galactica.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“which is why the Total Perspective Vortex is as horrific as it is.
For when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, ‘You are here.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“and the next day the parcel arrived. — This was all getting a bit eventful. In fact, when the parcel arrived, delivered by a kind of robot drone that dropped out of the sky making droning robot noises, it brought with it a sense, which gradually began to permeate through the whole village, that it was almost one event too many. It wasn’t the robot drone’s fault. All it required was Arthur Dent’s signature or thumbprint, or just a few scrapings of skin cells from the nape of his neck, and it would be on its way again. It hung around waiting, not quite sure what all this resentment was about.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“La vita sara' molto meno strana senza di te!
Arthur era sbalordito
- Sai - disse - credo sia la cosa piu' bella che mi sia mai stata detta.”
― Douglas Adams

“job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Damn it and blast it, he thought, and felt the need of some guidance and advice. He consulted the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He looked up "guidance" and it said "See under ADVICE". He looked up "advice" and it said "see under GUIDANCE".”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“but do you really think it’s wise under the circumstances? I mean, here we are on the run and everything, we must have the police of half the Galaxy after us by now, and we stop to pick up hitchhikers.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“When the hunt for new sources of energy had at one point got particularly frantic, one bright young chap suddenly spotted that one place which had never used up all its available energy was - the past. And with the sudden rush of blood to the head that such insights tend to induce, he invented a way of mining it that very same night, and within a year huge tracts of the past were being drained of all their energy and simply wasting away. Those who claimed that the past should be left unspoilt were accused of indulgingin an extremely expensive form of sentimentality.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“One moment I was sitting in your ship feeling very depressed, and the next moment I was standing here feeling utterly miserable. An Improbability Field I expect.”
― Douglas Adams

“working overtime to make up for their earlier blunder. They brought”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“We were wrong about trains, we were wrong about planes, we were wrong about radio, we were wrong about phones, we were wrong about . . . well, for a voluminous list of the things we have been wrong about, you could do worse than dig out a copy of a book called The Experts Speak by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“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. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so the idea was lost, seemingly for ever. This is her story.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It hadn’t properly registered yet with Arthur that the council wanted to knock it down and build a bypass instead.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Don’t Panic.’ It’s the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody’s said to me all day.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The history of every major galactic civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Enquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. ‘For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat?, the second by the question Why do we eat?, and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Besides, she told herself, taking a deep breath, if life had taught her anything it was this: Never go back for your bag.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“THE FOLLOWING MORNING the weather was so foul it hardly deserved the name, and Dirk decided to call it Stanley instead.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“The other was small, roundish, and moved with an ungainly restlessness, like a number of elderly squirrels trying to escape from a sack. His own age was on the older side of completely indeterminate. If”
― 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

“You certainly don't fuck about trying to ride manta rays.”
― Douglas Adams

“looked excitingly purposeful, with large video screens ranged over the control and guidance system panels on the concave wall, and long banks of computers set into the convex wall. In one corner a robot sat humped,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Do normálu sa vrátime ihneď ako stanovíme čo je vlastne normálne.”
― Douglas Adams

“Mantık belki iyi bir şeydi, ama evrim sürecinin de keşfettiği gibi birtakım sakıncalarının olduğu da bir gerçekti.
Mantıklı düşünebilen herhangi bir şeyin en az kendisi kadar mantıklı düşünebilen bir başka şey tarafından kolayca aldatılabilmesi mümkündü.”
― Douglas Adams, Otostopçu'nun Galaksi Rehberi

“Any time you see a film or TV show or a commercial that features someone dressed up as an animal, it’s probably Todd inside. “I was in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” he told me. “Guess,” he added, “which one I was.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time