“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.”

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

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Last update Feb. 12, 2022. History

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Douglas Adams 317

English writer and humorist 1952–2001

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

Source: Turning to one another (2002), p. 55

“Conversations cease when we learn to discover the joys of internalization.”

Mahāprajña (1920–2010) Acharya or the Svetambar Terapanth sect of Jainism

Thought at Sunrise (2007)

“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

“For each human being there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt.”

Larry Niven book Flash Crowd

Flash Crowd, section 9, in Three Trips in Time and Space (1973), edited by Robert Silverberg, p. 74

“He was laughing again. What was it about Bird that made him do that?”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 11-20, p. 73

“In Quintilian’s expositions there appears a note of melancholy when he discovers that toward the decline of life, the ratio sneaks in gradually, choking up insight into the original.”

Ernesto Grassi (1902–1991) Italian philosopher

Source: Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), p. 51

“Conversations bore me, to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to my soul.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“I think he who knows himself will know accurately, not the opinion of others about him, but what he is in reality… he ought to discover within himself what is right for him to do and not learn it from without…”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

As quoted in The Works of the Emperor Julian (1923) by Wilmer Cave France Wright, p. 91
General sources

“First get your man; all is got: he can learn to do all things, from making boots, to decreeing judgments, governing communities; and will do them like a man.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)
Context: In all cases, therefore, we will agree with the judicious Mrs. Glass: 'First catch your hare!' First get your man; all is got: he can learn to do all things, from making boots, to decreeing judgments, governing communities; and will do them like a man.

“God has far better things to do than creating self-important little species such as ours. He's got wars, deaths, disasters and diseases to ignore for starters. And a fair bit of not-exist-ing-at-all to be getting on with.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian, 4 December 2006, When it comes to psychics, my stance is hardcore: they must die alone in windowless cells http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1963337,00.html
Guardian columns

“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.”

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Douglas Adams 317

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