Quotes by Douglas Adams
It is known that there is an infinite number of worlds, but that not every one is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number 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 population 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.
Adams, Douglas
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
Adams, Douglas
Macintosh - we might not get everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end.
Adams, Douglas
What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've certainly learned something about it yourself.
Adams, Douglas
If we see you smoking we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action.
Adams, Douglas
Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rules.
Adams, Douglas
My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.
Adams, Douglas
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Adams, Douglas
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 movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
Adams, Douglas
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
Adams, Douglas
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.
Adams, Douglas
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
Adams, Douglas
Every time you wake up and ask yourself, What good things am I going to do today?, remember that when the sun goes down at sunset, it will take a part of your life with it.
Adams, Douglas
"I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing." "Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q. E. D." "Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
Adams, Douglas
It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. 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 - whilst 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.
Adams, Douglas
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.
Adams, Douglas
There is an art, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Adams, Douglas
Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.
Adams, Douglas
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
Adams, Douglas
Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.
Adams, Douglas
First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII - and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure.
Adams, Douglas
Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.
Adams, Douglas
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
Adams, Douglas