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Douglas Adams Quotes
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Douglas Noel Adams was an English author, scriptwriter, essayist, humorist, satirist and dramatist.

Adams is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which originated in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime and generated a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.

Adams also wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul , and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff , The Deeper Meaning of Liff , Last Chance to See , and three stories for the television series Doctor Who; he also served as script editor for the show's seventeenth season in 1979. A posthumous collection of his works, including an unfinished novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.

Adams was known as an advocate for environmentalism and conservation, as a lover of fast cars, cameras, technological innovation and the Apple Macintosh, and as a "devout atheist".

✵ 11. March 1952 – 11. May 2001   •   Other names Дуглас Адамс
Douglas Adams photo
Douglas Adams: 317   quotes 191   likes

Douglas Adams Quotes

“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 Well, business as usual, I suppose.”

Douglas Adams

Source: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Business

“Conceited little mega-puppy.”

Douglas Adams

“Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion is the better part of valor, so was cowardice is the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet.”

Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

Parting

“When the girl sitting at the next table looked away from a moment, Dirk leaned over and took her coffee. He knew that he was perfectly safe doing this because she would simply not be able to believe that this had happened.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Girl , Coffee

“There was a terribly ghastly silence.
There was a terribly ghastly noise.
There was a terribly ghastly silence.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Silence

“Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe there is a reason.”

Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

Universe , Heart

“There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Life , People , Problem , Time

“something almost, but not quite entirely unlike tea”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Tea

“He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

World

“Dirk was, for one of the few times in a life of exuberantly prolific loquacity, wordless.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Life , Time

“How do you know you're having fun if there's no one watching you have it?”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Let us be dreamers, thinkers, speculative philosophers, or as our spouses would have it: Idiots”

Douglas Adams

Variant: He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

“For a moment he felt good about this. A moment or two later he felt bad about feeling good about it. Then he felt good about feeling bad about feeling good about it and satisfied, drove on into the night.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Feeling , Night

“The chances of finding out what’s really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied.”

Douglas Adams
Sense , Universe , Chance

“He sniggered.
He didn't like to think of himself as the sort of person who giggled or sniggered, but he had to admit that he had been giggling and sniggering almost continuously for well over half an hour now.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Thinking , Personality

“In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Life

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

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Speech http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/index.html at Digital Biota 2 http://www.cyberbiology.org/, Cambridge, UK, (1998)
Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Context: There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.

World

“We demand admission!”

Douglas Adams

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“And that, apart from a flurry of sensational newspaper reports which exposed him as a fraud, then trumpeted him as the real thing so that they could have another round of exposing him as a fraud again and then trumpeting him as the real thing again, until they got bored and found a nice juicy snooker player to harass instead, was that.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

Fraud

“WFT-II was the only British software company that could be mentioned in the same sentence as such major U. S. companies as Microsoft or Lotus. The sentence would probably run along the lines of "WFT-II, unlike such major U. S. companies as Microsoft or Lotus …"”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

but it was a start.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

“If we think that the world is here for us we will continue to destroy it the way we have been destroying it, because we think we can do no harm.”

Douglas Adams

Parrots, the Universe and Everything (2001)

World , Way , Thinking

“You would probably not say that he was sleeping the sleep of the just, unless you meant the just asleep, but it was certainly the sleep of someone who was not fooling about when he climbed into bed of a night and turned off the light.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 3

Fools , Sleep , Light , Night

“LAXOBIGGING (ptcpl. vb.) Struggling to extrude an extremely large turd.”

Douglas Adams book The Meaning of Liff

The Meaning of Liff (1983)

“FAIRYMOUNT (vb. n.) Polite word for buggery.”

Douglas Adams book The Meaning of Liff

The Meaning of Liff (1983)

“She held the car grimly to the road as it negotiated the bends with considerable difficulty and the straight sections with only slightly less. The car had landed her in court on one occasion when one of its front wheels had sailed off on a little expedition of its own and nearly caused an accident. The police witness in court had referred to her beloved Citroën as "the alleged car" and the name had subsequently stuck. She was particularly fond of the alleged car for many reasons. If one of its doors, for instance, fell off she could put it back on herself, which is more than you could say for a BMW.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 12

Cars

“Or maybe she decided that an evening with your old tutor would be blisteringly dull and opted for the more exhilarating course of washing her hair instead. Dear me, I know what I would have done. It's only lack of hair that forces me to pursue such a hectic social round these days.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

“You are disoriented. Blackness swims toward you like a school of eels who have just seen something that eels like a lot.”

Douglas Adams

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy text adventure game (1985), published by Infocom.

School

“It was a couple of days before Kate Schechter became aware of any of these things, or indeed of anything at all in the outside world.
She passed the time quietly in a world of her own in which she was surrounded as far as the eye could see with old cabin trunks full of past memories in which she rummaged with great curiosity, and sometimes bewilderment. Or, at least, about a tenth of the cabin trunks were full of vivid, and often painful or uncomfortable memories of her past life; the other nine-tenths were full of penguins, which surprised her. Insofar as she recognised at all that she was dreaming, she realised that she must be exploring her own subconscious mind. She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was very clear what the other nine-tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 2

Life , Pain , World , Dreams

“Thor was the God of Thunder and, frankly, acted like it.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 7

God

“It was a battered yellow Citroën 2CV which had had one careful owner but also three suicidally reckless ones.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 11

Suicide

“I think a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to other people about telephones. And a computer nerd therefore is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer.”

Douglas Adams

Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires TV program (1996) http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part1.html

People , Thinking , Personality

“SHOEBURYNESS (abs. n.) The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat which is still warm from somebody else's bottom”

Douglas Adams book The Meaning of Liff

The Meaning of Liff (1983)

Feeling

“… Most of the words that airline staff used, or rather most of the sentences into which they were habitually arranged, had been worked so hard that they had died.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

“The explosion was now officially designated an "Act of God."
But, thought Dirk, what god? And why?
What god would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15:37 flight to Oslo?”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch.6

God

“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.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

“It'd be like a bunch of rivers, the Amazon and the Mississippi and the Congo asking how the Atlantic Ocean might affect them… and the answer is, of course, that they won't be rivers anymore, just currents in the ocean.”

Douglas Adams

His stated response to representatives of the music, publishing and broadcasting industries who had asked Douglas at a conference how he thought technological changes will affect them, apparently hoping his response would be something to the effect of, "not very much"
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Future (2001)

“The usual people tried to claim responsibility.
First the IRA, then the PLO and the Gas Board. Even British Nuclear Fuels rushed out a statement to the effect that the situation was completely under control, that it was a one in a million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all, and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic, before finally having to admit that it wasn't actually anything to do with them at all.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 2

People , Chance

“My name is Kate Schechter. Two 'c's, two 'h's, two 'e's, and also a 't', an 'r', and an 's'. Provided they're all there the bank won't be fussy about the order they come in. They never seem to know themselves.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 1

“In fact, a very similar phrase was invented to account for the sudden transition of wood, metal, plastic and concrete into an explosive condition, which was "nonlinear, catastrophic structural exasperation," or to put it another way--as a junior cabinet minister did on television the following night in a phrase which was to haunt the rest of his career--the check-in desk had just got "fundamentally fed up with being where it was."”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 2

Way , Night

“The device [electronic I Ching calculator] also functioned as an ordinary calculator, but only to a limited degree. It could handle any calculation which returned an answer of anything up to 4. …anything above 4 it represented merely as "A Suffusion of Yellow." Dirk was not certain if this was a programming error or an insight beyond his ability to fathom, but he was crazy about it anyway, enough to hand over twenty pounds of ready cash for the thing.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 10

Error

“"Stotting" is jumping upward with all four legs simultaneously. My advice: do not die until you've seen a large black poodle stotting in the snow.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

“The room was not a room to elevate the soul. Louis XIV, to pick a name at random, would not have liked it, would have found it not sunny enough, and insufficiently full of mirrors. He would have desired someone to pick up the socks, put the records away, and maybe burn the place down. Michelangelo would have been distressed by its proportions, which were neither lofty nor shaped by any noticeable inner harmony or symmetry, other than that all parts of the room were pretty much equally full of old coffee mugs, shoes and brimming ashtrays, most of which were now sharing their tasks with each other. The walls were painted in almost precisely that shade of green which Raffaello Sanzio would have bitten off his own right hand at the wrist rather than use, and Hercules, on seeing the room, would probably have returned half an hour later armed with a navigable river. It was, in short, a dump, and was likely to remain so for as long as it remained in the custody of Mr Svlad, or 'Dirk', Gently, né Cjelli.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 3

Shoe , Soul , Coffee , Parting

“There was constant talk about hewing things and ravaging things and splitting things asunder. Lots of big talk of things being mighty, and of things being riven, and of things being in thrall to other things, but very little attention given, as I now realise, to the laundry.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 18

“The Great Zaganza said: "You are very fat and stupid and persistently wear a ridiculous hat which you should be ashamed of."”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 35

Stupidity

“We don't have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it.”

Douglas Adams

Speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZG8HBuDjgc at The University of California, videoed by UCTV (May 2001).

World