
“The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is…42!”
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Jitterbug Perfume (1984)
“The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is…42!”
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“I never understood the ultimate answer. That was beyond me.”
Source: The Time Axis (1949), Ch. 1 : Encounter In Rio
Context: I never understood the ultimate answer. That was beyond me. It took the combined skills of three great civilizations far apart in time to frame that godlike concept in which the tangible universe itself was only a single factor.
And even then it was not enough. It took the Face of Ea — which I shall never be able to describe fully.
I saw it, though. I saw it...
1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
Context: I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today. I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I'm talking about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate. I've seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South. I've seen hate on the faces of too many Klansmen and too many White Citizens Councilors in the South to want to hate myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.
interview by John L. Allen, Jr. on July 18, 2005, National Catholic Reporter (July 21, 2005) http://www.natcath.org/mainpage/specialdocuments/cabibbo.htm
Source: Address on Laying the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument (1825), p. 71
Context: Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the theatre of intellectual operation.
“No scientist ever believes that he has the final answer or the ultimate truth on anything.”
Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 34
nytimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/world/europe/spurred-by-global-crises-germany-weighs-a-more-muscular-foreign-policy.html
Epitaph for George Dillon, Act II (1957)
Co-written with Anthony Creighton.
Source: The Art of War, Chapter VI · Weaknesses and Strengths