Douglas Adams > Quotes

“To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem”
― Douglas Adams

“He felt the way he imagined an angel must feel doing its celebrated dance on the head of a pin while being counted by philosophers”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“They looked at each other for a moment.

The moment became a longer moment, and suddenly it was a very long moment, so long one could hardly tell where all the time was coming from.

For Arthur, who could usually contrive to feel self-conscious if left alone with a Swiss cheese plant, the moment was one of sustained revelation. He felt on the sudden like a cramped and zoo-born animal who wakes up one morning to find the door to his cage handing quietly open and the savanna stretching gray and pink to the distant rising sun, while all around new sounds are waking.

He wondered what the new sounds were as he gazed at her openly wondering face and her eyes that smiled with a shared surprise.

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 deleted it or recognized its tones until it now said something it had never said to him before, which was "yes.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

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

“This is a recorded announcement,” it said, “as I’m afraid we’re all out at the moment. The commercial council of Magrathea thanks you for your esteemed visit …” (“A voice from ancient Magrathea!” shouted Zaphod. “Okay, okay,” said Ford.) “… but regrets,” continued the voice, “that the entire planet is temporarily closed for business. Thank you. If you would care to leave your name and the address of a planet where you can be contacted, kindly speak when you hear the tone.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“Bırak geçmiş kendi kendine kalsın ve yaşadığın an geleceğe doğru ilerlesin diye düşünüyordu.”
― Douglas Adams, Guide to the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“worried that one day sentient life forms would forget how to do this. Only by counting could humans demonstrate their independence of computers.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“What was the Sherlock Holmes principle? ‘Once you have discounted the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’” “I reject that entirely,” said Dirk, sharply. “The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something which works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say, ‘Yes, but he or she simply wouldn’t do that.’” “Well, it happened to me today, in fact,” replied Kate. “Ah yes,” said Dirk, slapping the table and making the glasses jump, “your girl in the wheelchair – a perfect example. The idea that she is somehow receiving yesterday’s stock market prices apparently out of thin air is merely impossible, and therefore must be the case, because the idea that she is maintaining an immensely complex and laborious hoax of no benefit to herself is hopelessly improbable. The first idea merely supposes that there is something we don’t know about, and God knows there are enough of those. The second, however, runs contrary to something fundamental and human which we do know about. We should therefore be very suspicious of it and all its specious rationality.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul

“How can you tell there's anything out there?' said the man politely. 'The door's closed.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“San Francisco, which the Guide describes as a “good place to go. It’s very easy to believe that everyone you meet there also is a space traveler. Starting a new religion for you is just their way of saying ‘hi.’ Until you’ve settled in and got the bang of the place it is best to say ‘no’ to three questions out of any given four that anyone may ask you, because there are some very strange things going on there, some of which an unsuspecting alien could die of.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it,’ said Marvin. ‘And what happened?’ pressed Ford. ‘It committed suicide,’ said Marvin”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“What did “psychosassic” mean? It was his own word and he vigorously denied that it meant anything at all.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Don’t tell me about the future,” said Ford. “I’ve been all over the future. Spend half my time there. It’s the same as anywhere else. Anywhen else. Whatever. Just the same old stuff in faster cars and smellier air.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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

“he had had absolutely no cigarettes at all. Not one. They were out of his life, foresworn utterly. He didn’t need them. He could do without them. They merely nagged at him like mad and made his life a living hell,”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul

“Even traveling despondently is better than arriving here.” To welcome visitors the arrivals hall featured a picture of the president of NowWhat, smiling. It was the only picture anybody could find of him, and it had been taken shortly after he had shot himself, so although the photo had been retouched as well as could be managed, the smile it wore was rather a ghastly one.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million “pages” could be summoned at a moment’s notice.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“He gasped in terror at what sounded like a man trying to gargle while fighting off a pack of wolves.”
― Douglas Adams

“Sabiendo que estaban reunidos [...] por una curiosa perversión de la física, como si las relaciones entre la gente estuvieran sujetas a las mismas leyes que regían la relación entre átomos y moléculas.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Mr. L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based bipedal life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn’t know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr. L. Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The President in particular is very much a figurehead – he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“İlk savın sahipleri meselenin bu olmadığını söylüyorlardı. Meselenin ne olduğuna tam olarak emin değillerdi, ama bu olmadığını biliyorlardı.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“She had nearly said, “Over what?,” but at that moment she realized that if she said that she would have to listen to his reply, which would be bound to infuriate her into arguing back. It occurred to her for the first time that the only way of escaping was just not to get drawn into these arguments. If she simply did not respond this time, then she was free to leave. She tried it. She felt a sudden freedom. She left. A week later, in much the”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“Kendini afallamış, yapayalnız ve sevgisiz hissediyordu.”
― Douglas Adams, Guide to the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“What do you mean you’ve met?’ he demanded. ‘This is Zaphod Beeblebrox from Betelgeuse Five you know, not bloody Martin Smith from Croydon.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots 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

“He was so deeply aggravated that he thought he would share the sensation by phoning someone up and aggravating them, as it would be almost certain to do at twenty past one in the morning.”
― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently: The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul: A BBC Radio Full-Cast Dramatization