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Atheism
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"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
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Cats
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One of the problems of taking things apart and seeing how they work - supposing you're trying to find out how a cat works--you take that cat apart to see how it works, what you've got in your hands is a non-working cat. The cat wasn't a sort of clunky mechanism that was susceptible to our available tools of analysis.
-Douglas Adams
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Computers
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The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second- rate technology, led them into it in the first place.
-Douglas Adams
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Design
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A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
-Douglas Adams
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Disability, Handicaps
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One always overcompensates for disabilities. I'm thinking of having my entire body surgically removed.
-Douglas Adams
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Journeys
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"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be."
-Douglas Adams
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Learning
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Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
-Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
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Life
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"Come on," insisted Zaphod, "I've found a way in."
"In?" said Arthur in horror.
"Into the interior of the planet! An underground passage. The force of the whale's impact cracked it open, and that's where we have to go. Where no man has trod these five million years, into the very depths of time itself ..."
Marvin started his ironical humming again.
Zaphod hit him and he shut up.
With little shudders of disgust they all followed Zaphod down the incline into the crater, trying very hard not to look at its unfortunate creator.
"Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
-Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (ch. 20)
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Life...is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy , and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.
-Douglas Adams
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"Life is wasted on the living."
-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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Mankind, Man
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For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on--while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man--for precisely the same reasons.
-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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Perception
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"So, my argument is that as we become more and more scientifically literate, it’s worth remembering that the fictions with which we previously populated our world may have some function that it’s worth trying to understand and preserve the essential components of, rather than throwing out the baby with the bath water; because even though we may not accept the reasons given for them being here in the first place, it may well be that there are good practical reasons for them, or something like them, to be there."
http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/
-Douglas Adams, speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge U.K., September, 1998
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Space
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“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 vanish and be replaced by something even more bizarre and incomprehensible. There is another theory which states that this has already happened...”
-Douglas Adams, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe
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Universe, The
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It is known that there is an infinite number of worlds, but that not every one is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite nuber of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so if every planet in the Universe has a populations of zero then the entire population of the Universe must also be zero, and any people you may actually meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
-Douglas Adams, The Original Hitchhiker Radio Script
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Books by and about Douglas Adams
