Douglas Adams Quotes & Sayings

He felt like an old sponge steeped in paraffin and left in the sun to dry. — Douglas Adams

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. — Douglas Adams

I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed. — Douglas Adams

In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. — Douglas Adams

Goosnargh, said Ford Prefect, which was a special Betelgeusian word he used when he knew he should say something but didn't know what it should be. — Douglas Adams

I think media are at their most interesting before anybody's thought of calling them art, when people still think they're just a load of junk. — Douglas Adams

Live and learn. At any rate, you live. — Douglas Adams

If you've done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe? — Douglas Adams

Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single fact took the scientific world by storm. — Douglas Adams

It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's point of view without the proper training. — Douglas Adams

The villagers were absolutely hypnotized by all these wonderful magic images flashing over her wrist. They had only ever seen one spaceship crash, and it had been so frightening, violent and shocking and had caused so much horrible devastation, fire and death that, stupidly, they had never realized it was entertainment. — Douglas Adams

Groop I implore thee," continued the merciless Vogon, "my foonting turlingdromes. — Douglas Adams

His white hair seemed to be waving at someone it knew in the next room. — Douglas Adams

I've never met all these people you speak of. And neither, I suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their eyes and ears. — Douglas Adams

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. — Douglas Adams

A monstrous, grisly light poured in on them. - a hideous light - a boiling, pestilential light - a light that would have disfigured hell. The — Douglas Adams

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. — Douglas Adams

The difference between us and a computer is that, the computer is blindingly stupid, but it is capable of being stupid many, many million times a second. — Douglas Adams

If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like. ... But on the other hand, if somebody says, 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday,' you say, 'Fine, I respect that.' — Douglas Adams

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul. — Douglas Adams

One of the characteristics that laymen find most odd about zoologists is their insatiable enthusiasm for animal droppings. I can understand, of course, that the droppings yield a great deal of information about the habits and diets of the animals concerned, but nothing quite explains the sheer glee that the actual objects seem to inspire. — Douglas Adams

I don't want to die now!" he yelled. "I've still got a headache! I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it! — Douglas Adams

Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy - not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. — Douglas Adams

People always make this totally artificial distinction between what is commercial and what is good. They quote that maxim "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the public's taste" and I think that's very wrongheaded. I like to believe the audience is actually intelligent, because it's made up of other people like yourself. — Douglas Adams

Even a manically depressed robot is better to talk to than nobody. — Douglas Adams

Uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of — Douglas Adams

Being offended by things is the world's big hobby at the moment. It's almost taken over from wearing goatee beards. — Douglas Adams

It's easy to think that as a result of the extinction of the dodo, we are now sadder and wiser, but there's a lot of evidence to suggest that we are merely sadder and better informed. — Douglas Adams

Hundreds of people who've never written before send in 'Dr. Who' scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is. — Douglas Adams

[ ... ]he also had a device which looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million "pages" could be summoned at a moment's notice. It looked
insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words
Don't Panic printed on it in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was in fact that most
remarkable of all books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor - The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitch hiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in. — Douglas Adams

There is no problem so complicated that you can't find a very simple answer to it if you look at it right. — Douglas Adams

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. — Douglas Adams

If you'd call it a robot," muttered Arthur. "It's more a sort of electronic sulking machine. — Douglas Adams

One always overcompensates for disabilities. I'm thinking of having my entire body surgically removed. — Douglas Adams

He gestured Arthur toward a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus. "It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus, — Douglas Adams

Come off it, Mr. Dent," he said, "you can't win, you know. You can't lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely." He tried to make his eyes blaze fiercely but — Douglas Adams

The things by which our emotions can be moved - the shape of a flower or a Grecian urn, the way a baby grows, the way the wind brushes across your face, the way clouds move, their shapes, the way light dances on the water, or daffodils flutter in the breeze, the way in which the person you love moves their head, the way their hair follows that movement, the curve described by the dying fall of the last chord of a piece of music - all these things can be described by the complex flow of numbers.

That's not a reduction of it, that's the beauty of it. — Douglas Adams

I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere I needed to be. — Douglas Adams

Gilks sighed. 'You're a clever man, Cjelli, I grant you that,' he said, 'but you make the same
mistake a lot of clever people do of thinking everyone else is stupid. — Douglas Adams

The Hollywood process is like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it. — Douglas Adams

Proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye. — Douglas Adams

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. — Douglas Adams

Ford was humming something. it was just one note repeated at intervals. He was hoping that somebody would ask him what he was humming, but nobody did. if anybody had asked him he would have said he was humming the first line of a Noel Coward song called "Mad About the Boy" over and over again. it would then have been pointed out to him that he was only singing one note, to which he would have replied that for reasons that he hoped would be apparent, he was omitting the "About the Boy" bit. he was annoyed that nobody asked. — Douglas Adams

So after a hectic week of believing that war was peace, that good was bad, that the moon was made of blue cheese, and that God needed a lot of money sent to a certain box number, the Monk started to believe that 35 percent of all tables were hermaphrodites, and then broke down. — Douglas Adams

It's quicker, easier, and involves less licking — Douglas Adams

CLUN (n.) A leg which has gone to sleep and has to be hauled around after you. — Douglas Adams

The gorillas are not yet sufficiently advanced in evolutionary terms to have discovered the benefits of passports, currency-declaration forms, and official bribery, and therefore tend to wander backward and forward across the border as and when their beastly, primitive whim takes them. — Douglas Adams

That's the point, it's out of date now, — Douglas Adams

We'll meet the meat. — Douglas Adams

Space is really big-REALLY big. — Douglas Adams

Predicting the future is a mug's game, but any game is improved when you can actually keep the score. — Douglas Adams

What, are you, crazy?' 'It's a possibility I haven't ruled out yet', said Zaphod quietly. 'I know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good. — Douglas Adams

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. — Douglas Adams

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. — Douglas Adams

There was a terrible ghastly silence. There was a terrible ghastly noise. There was a terrible ghastly silence. The — Douglas Adams

The truth of the matter is, that most English people don't know how to make tea anymore either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the impression that the English are just generally clueless about hot stimulants. — Douglas Adams

The safety of the crew is absolutely assured. — Douglas Adams

He inched his way up the corridor as if he would rather be yarding his way down it, which was true. — Douglas Adams

You want to check your legal position, you do, mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job, aren't we? I mean, what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives you his bleeding phone number the next morning? — Douglas Adams

The ship did. All by itself." "Huh?" "While we were in Improbability Drive." "But that's incredible." "No, Zaphod. Just very very improbable. — Douglas Adams

Because the Internet is so new, we still don't really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that's what we're used to. So people complain that there's a lot of rubbish online, or that it's dominated by Americans, or that you can't necessarily trust what you read on the Web. — Douglas Adams

Was friend the word? He seemed more like a succession of extraordinary events than a person. — Douglas Adams

After five seconds there was a click, and the entire Universe was there in the box with him. — Douglas Adams

His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. — Douglas Adams

In the beginning the Universe was created.
This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. — Douglas Adams

God's Final Message to His Creation:
'We apologize for the inconvenience. — Douglas Adams

He picked up the letter Q and hurled it into a distant privet bush where it hit a young rabbit. The rabbit hurtled off in terror and didn't stop till it was set upon and eaten by a fox which choked on one of its bones and died on the bank of a stream which subsequently washed it away.
During the following weeks Ford Perfect swallowed his pride and struck up a relationship with a girl who had been a personnel officer on Golgafrincham, and he was terribly upset when she suddenly passed away as a result of drinking water from a pool that had been polluted by the body of a dead fox. — Douglas Adams

Her laughter seemed to discharge something in the atmosphere. From somewhere at the back of the crowd a single voice started to sing a tune that would have enabled Paul McCartney, had he written it, to buy the world. — Douglas Adams

If they don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. — Douglas Adams

For Children: You will need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It's quite a simple difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week, whereas a fried egg comes out of a chicken. Like most things, of course, it isn't quite that simple. The fried egg isn't properly a fried egg until it's been put in a frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn't do to a Friday, of course, though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a Thursday, if you like, or on a cooker. It's all rather complicated, but it makes a kind of sense if you think about it for a while. — Douglas Adams

I'm sure we can come to some arrangement," said Ford. "Excuse me!" he shouted. — Douglas Adams

the only thing that really gets hurt when you try and change time is yourself. — Douglas Adams

A beach house isn't just real estate. It's a state of mind. — Douglas Adams

Is that robot yours?" he said. "No," came a thin metallic voice from the crater, "I'm mine. — Douglas Adams

When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates — Douglas Adams

He had got himself a life. Now he had to find a purpose in it. — Douglas Adams

Ford Prefect suppressed a little giggle of evil satisfaction, realized that he had no reason to suppress it, and laughed out loud, a wicked laugh. — Douglas Adams

His horoscope had been pretty misleading as well. It had mentioned an unusual amount of planetary activity in his sign and had urged him to differentiate between what he thought he wanted and what he actually needed, and suggested that he should tackle emotional or work problems with determination and complete honesty, but had inexplicably failed to mention that he would be dead before the day was out. — Douglas Adams

It is most gratifying," it said, "that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom in future lives ... thank you. — Douglas Adams

The computers were index-linked to the Galactic stock-market prices, you see, so that we'd all be revived when everybody else had rebuilt the economy enough to afford our rather expensive services. — Douglas Adams

You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen. — Douglas Adams

It was what he had waited for all these years, but when he had deciphered the signal pattern sitting alone in his small dark room, a coldness had gripped him and squeezed his heart. Of all the races in all of the Galaxy who could have come and said a big hello to planet Earth, he thought, didn't it just have to be the Vogons. — Douglas Adams

Arthur didn't notice that the men were running from the bulldozers; he didn't notice that Mr Prosser was staring hectically into the sky. What Mr Prosser had noticed was that huge yellow somethings were screaming through the cluds, impossibly huge somethings. — Douglas Adams

He continued: I should warn you that the chamber we are about to pass into does not literally exist within our planet. It is a little too ... large. We are about to pass through a gateway into a vast tract of hyperspace. It may disturb you. — Douglas Adams

Every single decision we make, every breath we draw, opens some doors and closes many others. Most of them we don't notice. Some we do. — Douglas Adams

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.' "'But,' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. "'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and — Douglas Adams

doing with the puzzled — Douglas Adams

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

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

If I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn't the forces of natural selection that designed fish, It must have been an Italian. — Douglas Adams

But don't you understand that people live or die on your word?"

The ruler of the Universe waited for as long as he could. When he heard the faint sound of the ship's engines starting he spoke to cover it.

"It's nothing to do with me," he said, "I am not involved with people. The Lord knows I am not a cruel man."

"Ah!" barked Zarniwoop, "you say 'The Lord'. You believe in something!"

"My cat," said the man benignly, picking it up and stroking it, "I call him The Lord. I am kind to him. — Douglas Adams

The nothingth of a second for which the hole existed reverberated backwards and forwards through time in a most improbable fashion. Somewhere in the deeply remote past it seriously traumatized a small random group of atoms drifting through the empty sterility of space and made them cling together in the most extraordinarily unlikely patterns. These patterns quickly learnt to copy themselves (this was part of what was so extraordinary about the patterns) and went on to cause massive trouble on every planet they drifted on to. That was how life began in the Universe. — Douglas Adams

I figure this," said Zaphod. "Whatever happened to my mind, I did it. And I did it in such a way that it wouldn't be detected by the Government screening tests. — Douglas Adams

Well, let us say inexplicable. There is no point in using the word "impossible" to describe something that has clearly happened. But it cannot be explained by anything we know. — Douglas Adams

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

I tend not to read or watch Science Fiction, particularly not comedy Science Fiction. The point is that if it's less good than what I do, there's no point in reading it, if it's better than what I do it makes me depressed — Douglas Adams

Watching the very last glimmers of light sink into blackness behind the horizon. — Douglas Adams

The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in. — Douglas Adams

Patterns that Arthur knew, rough blobby shapes that were as familiar to him as the shapes of words, part of the furniture of his mind. For a few seconds he sat in stunned silence as the images rushed around his mind and tried to find somewhere to settle down and make sense ... — Douglas Adams

Except that the legends say the Magratheans used to manufacture planets. — Douglas Adams