Mostly Harmless (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #5)

by Douglas Adams

Ford had his own code of ethics. It wasn’t much of one, but it was his and he stuck by it, more or less. One rule he made was never to buy his own drinks. He wasn’t sure if that counted as an ethic, but you have to go with what you’ve got.

“A beach house,” he said, “doesn’t even have to be on the beach. Though the best ones are. We all like to congregate,” he went on, “at boundary conditions.”

“Where land meets water. Where earth meets air. Where body meets mind. Where space meets time. We like to be on one side, and look at the other.”

Only an absolute idiot would be sitting where he was, so he was winning already. A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.