Douglas Adams Quotes

The little waiter's eyebrows wandered about his forehead in confusion.

I find that writing is a constant battle with exactly the same problems you've always had.

Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise.

Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.

Their minds sang with the ecstatic knowledge that either what they were doing was completely and utterly and totally impossible or that physics had a lot of catching up to do.

Was there a reason behind it? There would be no point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have a reason for anything he did at all: he had turned unfathomability into an art form. He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

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

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

The bowler approached the wicket at a lope, a trot, and then a run. He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball.

I think all cats are wild. They only act tame if there´s a saucer of milk in it for them.

Marvin trudged on down the corridor, still moaning. "...and then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left hand side..." "No?" said Arthur grimly as he walked along beside him. "Really?" "Oh yes," said Marvin, "I mean I've asked for them to be replaced but no one ever listens." "I can imagine.

Time travel, by its very nature, was invented in all periods of history simultaneously.

If on the other hand he went to pay his respects to The Door and it wasn't there . . . what then? The answer, of course, was very simple. He had a whole board of circuits for dealing with exactly this problem, in fact this was the very heart of his function. He would continue to believe in it whatever the facts turned out to be, what else was the meaning of Belief? The Door would still be there, even if the Door was not.

It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this [Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'] and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made by anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of the word "Infinite". Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, "wow, that's big", time. Infinity is just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.

There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.

He learned to communicate with birds and discovered their conversation was fantastically boring. It was all to do with windspeed, wingspans, power-to-weight ratios and a fair bit about berries.

The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than what it's short for.

A fragrant breeze wandered up from the quiet sea, trailed along the beach, and drifted back to the sea again, wondering where to go next. On a mad impulse it went up to the beach again. It drifted back to sea.

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

Yes, I think I use the term radical rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as atheist some people will say, Don't you mean agnostic? I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one...etc., etc. It's easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal and that it's an opinion I hold seriously.

It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion on them. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.

The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%.

Earth: mostly harmless

The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun to Be With. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing devision of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Just supposing," he said, "just supposing" --he didn't know what was coming next, so he thought he'd just sit back and listen--"that there was some extraordinary way in which you were very important to me, and that, though you didn't know it, I was very important to you, but it all went for nothing because we only had five miles and I was a stupid idiot at knowing how to say something very important to someone I've only just met and not crash into lorries a the same time, what would you say..." He paused, helplessly, and looked at her. "I should do.

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before--and thus was the Empire forged.

The kakapo is a bird out of time. If you look one in its large, round, greeny-brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, thought you know that it probably will not be.

The Saab seethed off into the night. Arthur watched it go, as stunned as a man might be who, having believed himself to be totally blind for five years, suddenly discovers that he had merely been wearing too large a hat.

The more Susan waited, the more the doorbell didn't ring. Or the phone.

Anything that happens, happens.

The future of computer power is pure simplicity.

Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win.

Alone of all the races on earth, they seem to be free from the 'Grass is Greener on the other side of the fence' syndrome, and roundly proclaim that Australia is, in fact, the other side of that fence.

There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world.

We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.

Life,” said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.

The single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood.

We live in strange times. We also live in strange places, each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universe are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own.

There are two things you should remember when dealing with parallel universes. One, they're not really parallel, and two, they're not really universes

The switch had two settings. You could either turn it to AUTO, in which case the awning lowered itself whenever the sun came out, or you could set it to MANUEL [sic], in which case, we assumed, a small, incompetent Spanish waiter came and did it for you.

I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style

Presidents don't have power. Their job is to draw attention away from it.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide has not been an opera. It has however been a tapestry, if you count a woven bath towel as a tapestry.