The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the Q letter into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable.

Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in restaurants.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

"Does God know he [exists]?" "Of course he does. Otherwise, you could not have asked the question, and I could not have answered."

Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means.

The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making.

For seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty-two - and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was.