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

by Douglas Adams

“What I lost, I think, was a whole other life.” “Everybody does that. Every moment of every day. Every single decision we make, every breath we draw, opens some doors and closes many others. Most of them we don’t notice. Some we do. Sounds like you noticed one.”

You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.

“You come to me for advice, but you can’t cope with anything you don’t recognize. Hmmm. So we’ll have to tell you something you already know but make it sound like news, eh?

“You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself.”

“Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.”

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else’s point of view without the proper training.

“So that you understand that just because you see something, it doesn’t mean to say it’s there. And if you don’t see something, it doesn’t mean to say it’s not there. It’s only what your senses bring to your attention.”

It was his job to do his job, which was to do his job. If that led to a certain narrowness of vision and circularity of thought, then it wasn’t his job to worry about such things.