The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Quotes

“Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Trilogy

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy What to do if you find yourself stuck with no hope of rescue, apart from Don't Panic.

Consider yourself lucky that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seem to be more likely, consider yourself lucky that it wouldn't be for much longer.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts

“Tips for aliens in New York: ‘Land anywhere, Central Park, anywhere. No one will care, or indeed even notice. ‘Surviving: Get a job as a cab driver immediately. A cab driver’s job is to drive people anywhere they want to go in big yellow machines called taxis. Don’t worry if you don’t know how the machine works and you can’t speak the language, don’t understand the geography or indeed the basic physics of the area, and have large green antennae growing out of your head. Believe me, this is the best way of staying inconspicuous. ‘If your body is really weird try showing it to people in the streets for money.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“You know,’ said Arthur, ‘it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.’ ‘Why, what did she tell you?’ ‘I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“My name?’ said the old man, and the same distant sadness came into his face again. He paused. ‘My name,’ he said, ‘. . . is Slartibartfast.’ Arthur practically choked. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he spluttered. ‘Slartibartfast,’ repeated the old man quietly. ‘Slartibartfast?’ The old man looked at him gravely. ‘I said it wasn’t important,’ he said.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“Come,’ called the old man, ‘come now or you will be late.’ ‘Late?’ said Arthur. ‘What for?’ ‘What is your name, human?’ ‘Dent. Arthur Dent,’ said Arthur. ‘Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent,’ said the old man, sternly. ‘It’s a sort of threat you see.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. Trin Tragula – for that was his name – was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Complete Trilogy in Five Parts

“I just thought you’d like to see,’ he said, ‘what angels wear on their feet. Just out of curiosity. I’m not trying to prove anything, by the way. I’m a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that. I’ll show you something to demonstrate that later. So, the other reason I call myself Wonko the Sane is so that people will think I am a fool. That allows me to say what I see when I see it. You can’t possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you’re a fool.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy of Five

“Your arrival on the planet has caused considerable excitement. It has already been hailed, so I gather, as the third most improbable event in the history of the Universe.”
“What were the first two?”
“Oh, probably just coincidences,”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts

“It was a world called Bartledan”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy of Five

“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.’)”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“The particular way in which he was choosing to dice recklessly with death today was by trying to pay for a drinks bill the size of a small defence budget with an American Express card, which was not acceptable anywhere in the known Universe.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts

“The Guide says that there is an art to flying,’ said Ford, ‘or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

“He smiled the smile that Zaphod had wanted to hit and this time Zaphod hit it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy of Five

“It consisted in large part of the engineers and researchers who had built the Heart of Gold – mostly humanoid, but here and there were a few reptiloid atomineers, two or three green sylph-like maximegalaticians, an octopodic physucturalist or two and a Hooloovoo (a Hooloovoo is a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue). All except the Hooloovoo were resplendent in their multicoloured ceremonial lab coats; the Hooloovoo had been temporarily refracted into a free-standing prism for the occasion.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Complete Trilogy in Five Parts

“Perhaps I’m old and tired,’ he continued, ‘but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“Ford,’ he said, ‘you’re turning into a penguin. Stop it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“What? Harmless! Is that all it’s got to say? Harmless! One word!’ Ford shrugged. ‘Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and only a limited amount of space in the book’s microprocessors,’ he said, ‘and no one knew much about the Earth, of course.’ ‘Well, for God’s sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit.’ ‘Oh yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it’s still an improvement.’ ‘And what does it say now?’ asked Arthur. ‘Mostly harmless,”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“If I asked you where the hell we were,’ said Arthur weakly, ‘would I regret it?’ Ford stood up. ‘We’re safe,’ he said. ‘Oh good,’ said Arthur. ‘We’re in a small galley cabin,’ said Ford, ‘in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet.’ ‘Ah,’ said Arthur, ‘this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn’t previously aware of.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“All I wanted to say,” bellowed the computer, “is that my circuits are now irrevocably committed to calculating the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” He paused and satisfied himself that he now had everyone’s attention, before continuing more quietly. “But the program will take me a little while to run.”

Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.

“How long?” he said.

“Seven and a half million years,” said Deep Thought.

Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other.

“Seven and a half million years!” they cried in chorus.

“Yes,” declaimed Deep Thought, “I said I’d have to think about it, didn’t I? And it occurs to me that running a program like this is bound to create an enormous amount of popular publicity for the whole are of philosophy in general. Everyone’s going to have their own theories about what answer I’m eventually going to come up with, and who better, to capitalize on that media market than you yourselves? So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other violently enough and maligning each other in the popular press, and so long as you have clever agents, you can keep yourselves on the gravy train for life. How does that sound?”

The two philosophers gaped at him.

“Bloody hell,” said Majikthise, “now that is what I call thinking. Here, Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?”

“Dunno,” said Vroomfondel in an awed whisper; “think our brains must be too highly trained, Majikthise.”

So saying, they turned on their heels and walked out of the door and into a life-style beyond their wildest dreams.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Boxset: Guide to the Galaxy / The Restaurant at the End of the Universe / Life, the Universe and ... and Thanks for all the Fish / Mostly Harmless

“Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.’ ‘And are you?’ ‘No. That’s where it all falls down, of course.’ ‘Pity,’ said Arthur with sympathy. ‘It sounded like quite a good lifestyle otherwise.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“if human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Complete Trilogy in Five Parts

“Arthur sat at the bar and rested. He was used to not knowing what was going on. He felt comfortable with it.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy of Five

“He let this feeling subside, and then sat on the sofa – carefully. Trillian sat on it too. It was real. At least, if it wasn’t real, it did support them, and as that is what sofas are supposed to do, this, by any test that mattered, was a real sofa.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy of Five

“Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion was the better part of valour, so was cowardice the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a cupboard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy of Five

“Well, you’re obviously being totally naive, of course,’ said the girl. ‘When you’ve been in marketing as long as I have you’ll know that before any new product can be developed it has to be properly researched. We’ve got to find out what people want from fire, how they relate to it, what sort of image it has for them.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“The major problem – one of the major problems, for there are several – one of the many major problems with governing people is that of who you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most 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. And”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five

“You can’t possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you’re a fool.”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five