Douglas Adams Quotes

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”

Douglas Adams book Last Chance to See

Source: Last Chance to See

“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.”

“Technology is a word that describes something that doesn’t work yet.”

Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

“I love deadlines. I like the whoosing sound they make as they fly by.”

“We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”

Variant: I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams Quotes about life

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

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”

“The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.”

“The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is…42!”

Variant: You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.
Source: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.”

“Part of how we come to take command of our world, to take command of our environment, to make these tools by which we're able to do this, is we ask ourselves questions about it the whole time. So this man starts to ask himself questions. "This world," he says, "so who made it?" Now, of course he thinks that, because he makes things himself. So he's looking for someone who would have made this world. He says, "Well, so who would have made this world? Well, it must be something a little like me. Obviously much much bigger. And necessarily invisible. But he would have made it. Now why did he make it?" Now we always ask ourselves "why?" because we look for intention around us; because we always intend– we do something with intention. We boil an egg in order to eat it. So we look at the rocks, and we look at the trees, and we wonder what intention is here even though it doesn't have intention.”

Douglas Adams Quotes about thinking

“Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”

Parrots, the Universe and Everything (2001)

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

“There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.”

“I think we have different value systems." —Arthur
"Well mine's better." —Ford”

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.”

Source: Mostly Harmless

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams: Trending quotes

“…he had a tremendous propensity for getting lost when driving. This was largely because of his "Zen" method of navigation, which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it. The results were more often surprising than successful, but he felt it was worth it for the sake of the few occasions when it was both.”

“One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious.”

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 4

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams Quotes

“Don't Panic.”

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“So long, and thanks for all the fish.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Variant: So long and thanks for all the fish.
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“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.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Gordon Way's astonishment at being suddenly shot dead was nothing compared to his astonishment at what happened next.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“It's not the fall that kills you; it's the sudden stop at the end.”

“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer”

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

“If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”

Source: Mostly Harmless

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre and that I am therefore excused from saving universes.”

“The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.”

“I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere I needed to be.”

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 13
Context: My own strategy is to find a car, or the nearest equivalent, which looks as if it knows where it's going and follow it. I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere I needed to be.

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Variant: In the beginning the Universe was created.
This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”

“I'd far rather be happy than right any day.”

Variant: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Source: Mostly Harmless

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“If I ever meet myself,' said Zaphod, 'I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's hit me.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.”

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

Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

“Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose.”

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

“He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arm out wide. "I will go mad!" he annouced.”

“I have always been absurdly, ridiculously tall. To give you an idea- when we went on school trips to Interesting and Improving Places, the form-master wouldn't say "Meet under the clock tower," or "Meet under the War Memorial," but "Meet under Adams.”

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus

“Please relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines one of which is on fire, "you are perfectly safe.”

Source: The Salmon of Doubt

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“You're a jerk,' repeated the alien, 'a complete asshole.”

“In fact the only thing that I don't like about Whisky, is that if I take the merest sip of the stuff, it sends a sharp pain from the back of my left eyeball down to the tip of my right elbow, and I begin to walk in a very special way, bumping into people and snarling at the furniture. I have therefore learned to turn my attention to other tipples. Margaritas, I'm very fond of, but they make me buy very stupid things. When ever I've had a few margaritas I always wake up in the morning with a sense of dread as to what I will find downstairs. The worst was a 6ft long pencil and a 2ft wide India rubber that I had shipped over from New York, as a result of one injudicious binge.”

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

“WOKING (vb.) To enter the kitchen with the precise determination to perform something only to forget what it is just before you do it.”

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

Douglas Adams book The Meaning of Liff

The Meaning of Liff (1983)

“Driving a Porsche in London is like bringing a Ming vase to a football game.”

“ABOYNE (vb.) To beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly bad that none of his clever tactics or strategies are of any use to him.”

As quoted in Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Companion (1988) by Neil Gaiman

Douglas Adams book The Meaning of Liff

The Meaning of Liff (1983)

“Solutions nearly always come from the direction you least expect, which means there's no point trying to look in that direction because it won't be coming from there.”

“AALST (n.) One who changes his name to be further to the front.”

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

Douglas Adams book The Meaning of Liff

Appears as the first entry of the book.
The Meaning of Liff (1983)

“Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

“"What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?"
This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.
Richard continued, "What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself."”

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
Context: Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

“The Guide says 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.”

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“You live and learn. At any rate, you live.”

“This must be Thursday,' said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”

Source: Mostly Harmless

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”

“Ford… you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.”

Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Reality is frequently inaccurate.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.”

“The Answer to the Great Question… Of Life, the Universe and Everything… Is… Forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.”

Douglas Adams. The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time. New York: Random House, 2002, 135–136.<br>Also quoted by Richard Dawkins in his Eulogy for Douglas Adams (17 September 2001) http://www.edge.org/documents/adams_index.html <br class="br">Context: If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat. Life is a level of complexity that almost lies outside our vision; it is so far beyond anything we have any means of understanding that we just think of it as a different class of object, a different class of matter; 'life', something that had a mysterious essence about it, was God given, and that's the only explanation we had. The bombshell comes in 1859 when Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species. It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this 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.

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe.”

“Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport."”

“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 1
Context: It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport." Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only exception of this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place.”