Douglas Adams Quotes - Page 5

They found a coin and helped him to the telescope. He complained and insulted them, but they helped him look at each individual letter in turn. The first letter was a 'w,' the second an 'e.' Then there was a gap. An 'a' followed, then a 'p,' an 'o,' and an 'l.'Marvin paused for a rest.After a few moments they resumed and let him see the 'o,' the 'g,' the 'i,' the 'z,' and the 'e.'The next two words were 'for' and 'the.' The last one was a long one, and Marvin needed another rest before the could tackle it.It started with 'i,' then 'n,' then 'c.' Next came an 'o' and an 'n,' followed by a 'v,' an 'e,' another 'n,' and an 'i.'After a final pause, Marvin gathered his strength for the last stretch.He read the 'e,' the 'n,' the 'c,' and at last the final 'e,' and staggered back into their arms.'I think,' he murmured at last from deep within his corroding, rattling thorax, 'I feel good about it.'The lights went out in his eyes for absolutely the very last time ever.
Douglas Adams
But unless we determine to take action,' said the old man querulously, as if struggling against something deeply insouciant in his nature, 'then we shall all be destroyed, we shall all die. Surely we care about that?' 'Not enough to want to get killed over it,' said Ford.
Douglas Adams
My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done.This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees. However, this is not relevant to what is currently on my mind because it concerns sloths, whereas the Branwell Brontë piece of information concerns writers and feeling like death and doing things to prove they can be done, all of which are pertinent to my current situation to a degree that is, frankly, spooky.
Douglas Adams
A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till it could be proved conclusively to him that he wasn't a fish. The bass player was busy machine-gunning his bedroom and the drummer was nowhere on board.Frantic inquiries led to the discovery that he was standing on a beach on Santraginus V over a hundred light years away where, he claimed, he had been happy for over half an hour now and had found a small stone that would be his friend.
Douglas Adams
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
Douglas Adams
I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
Douglas Adams
Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like, guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting "Gotcha". It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it.''Why not?''Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end.
Douglas Adams
God's Final Message to His Creation:'We apologize for the inconvenience.
Douglas Adams
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.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 for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Douglas Adams
So, the world is fine. 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. That’s what we need to think about.
Douglas Adams
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Douglas Adams
To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that 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.
Douglas Adams
The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the Q letter into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable.
Douglas Adams
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
Douglas Adams
Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."(Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
Douglas Adams
And so the Universe ended.
Douglas Adams
We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.
Douglas Adams
One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is no problem with changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.The major problem is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be descibed differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is futher complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later aditions of the book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs.The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over this tangle of academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "Future Perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.
Douglas Adams
My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first
Douglas Adams
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition ofthe word "Infinite".Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some.Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, atotally stunning size, "wow, that's big", time. Infinity is just sobig that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy.Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringlyhuge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.
Douglas Adams
Having solved all the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except for his own, three times over, [Marvin] was severely stuck for something to do, and had taken up composing short dolorous ditties of no tone, or indeed tune. The latest one was a lullaby.Marvin droned,Now the world has gone to bed,Darkness won't engulf my head,I can see in infrared,He paused to gather the artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse.Now I lay me down to sleep,Try to count electric sheep,Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
Douglas Adams
The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.
Douglas Adams
What's up?" [asked Ford.]"I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there.
Douglas Adams
Shee, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off.
Douglas Adams
Why?' is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you 'What's the time?' or 'When was the battle of 1066?' or 'How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?' The answers are easy and are, respectively, 'Seven-thirty in the evening,' 'Ten-fifteen in the morning,' and 'Don't ask stupid questions.
Douglas Adams
Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying "Blood...blood...blood...blood...
Douglas Adams
I have detected disturbances in the wash.''The wash?''The space-time wash.''Are we talking about some sort of Vogon laundromat, or what are we talking about?''Eddies in the space-time continuum.''Ah...is he. Is he.''What?''Er, who is Eddy, then, exactly?
Douglas Adams
Ow! My brains!
Douglas Adams
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?
Douglas Adams
It is worth repeating at this point the theories that Ford had come up with, on his first encounter with human beings, to account for their peculiar habit of continually stating and restating the very very obvious, as in "It's a nice day," or "You're very tall," or "So this is it, we're going to die."His first theory was that if human beings didn't keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably shriveled up.After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this--"If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.
Douglas Adams
Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin."And what happened?" pressed Ford."It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.
Douglas Adams
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.
Douglas Adams
Arthur: If I asked you where the hell we were, would I regret it?Ford: We're safe.Arthur: Oh good.Ford: We're in a small galley cabin in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet. that I wasn't previously aware of.
Douglas Adams
Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was."Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.
Douglas Adams
It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see...""You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?""No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.""Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy.""I did," said Ford. "It is.""So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?""It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.""You mean they actually vote for the lizards?""Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course.""But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?""Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?""What?""I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?""I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."Ford shrugged again."Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it.""But that's terrible," said Arthur."Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.
Douglas Adams
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.
Douglas Adams
I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.
Douglas Adams
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.
Douglas Adams
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.
Douglas Adams
To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
Douglas Adams
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
Douglas Adams
If I ever meet myself,' said Zaphod, 'I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's hit me.
Douglas Adams
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.
Douglas Adams
What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can't move, with no hope of rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer.
Douglas Adams
I don't accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me 'Well, you haven't been there, have you? You haven't seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid' - then I can't even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we'd got, and we've now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don't think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don't think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.
Douglas Adams
It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, 'As pretty as an airport.
Douglas Adams
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
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 non-working cat.
Douglas Adams
So this is it," said Arthur, "We are going to die.""Yes," said Ford, "except... no! Wait a minute!" He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. "What's this switch?" he cried."What? Where?" cried Arthur, twisting round."No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after all.
Douglas Adams
A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
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
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Douglas Adams
Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?
Douglas Adams
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
Douglas Adams
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.
Douglas Adams
Don't Panic.
Douglas Adams
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.
Douglas Adams
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams
I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer
Douglas Adams
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
Douglas Adams