The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2)

by Douglas Adams

but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term “Future Perfect” has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.

He shouldn’t have made such a conspicuous entrance. Hell, why not though, he thought. How do you know you’re having fun if there’s no one watching you have it?

Flare riding is one of the most exotic and exhilarating sports in existence, and those who can dare and afford to do it are among the most lionized men in the Galaxy. It is also of course stupefyingly dangerous—those who don’t die riding invariably die of sexual exhaustion at one of the Daedalus Club’s Après-Flare parties.

After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this—“If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.”

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must 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. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.