Douglas Adams Quotes

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

ABOYNE (vb.) To beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly that none of his clever tactics or strategies are of any use to him.

Why' is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it. The alphabet does not go 'A B C D What? When? How?' but it does go 'V W X Why? Z.

I like the cover," he said. "Don't Panic. It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day.

The point is, you see," said Ford, "that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later.

Ballycumber (ba-li-KUM-ber) n. One of the six half-read books lying somewhere in your bed.

A mobile phone needs a manual in the way that a teacup doesn't

...and the Universe, ... will explode later for your pleasure.

No. No games. He wanted her and didn't care who knew it. He definitely and absolutely wanted her, longed for her, wanted to do more things than there were names for with her.

Presidents don't have power. Their job is to draw attention away from it.

Technology is the name we give to stuff that doesn't work properly yet

The dew has fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning.

I wanted to be John Cleese. It took me some time to realise that the job was taken.

Well the hours are good...' ... 'but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.

Who should play the lead role in a film about me? Dunno. Danny De Vito? Jeff Goldblum? Meryl Streep? Someone of that kind.

Beppu (n.) The triumphant slamming shut of a book after reading the final page.

There was a terribly ghastly silence. There was a terribly ghastly noise. There was a terribly ghastly silence.

"I think we have different value systems." "Well, mine's better."

Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this -- partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.

Aberystwyth (n.) A nostalgic yearning which is in itself more pleasant than the thing being yearned for.

Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe there is a reason.

Anything that happens, happens.

"Does God know he [exists]?" "Of course he does. Otherwise, you could not have asked the question, and I could not have answered."

Beauty doesn't have to be about anything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto about?

Arthur Dent: What happens if I press this button? Ford Prefect: I wouldn't- Arthur Dent: Oh. Ford Prefect: What happened? Arthur Dent: A sign lit up, saying 'Please do not press this button again.

Cyberspace is - or can be - a good, friendly and egalitarian place to meet.

Stotting is jumping upward with all four legs simultaneously. My advice: do not die until you've seen a large black poodle stotting in the snow.

Let the past hold on to itself and let the present move forward into the future.

I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say.

If God allows proof that he exists he robs people of faith and without faith what is God? Nothing.

It takes an awful lot of time to not write a book.

They live in perpetual fear of the time they call "The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief

Dirk was, for one of the few times in a life of exuberantly prolific loquacity, wordless.

In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal.

In the stillness, a fly would not have dared clear it's throat.

For millions of years, on average, one species became extinct every century.... We are now heaving more than a thousand different species of animals and plants off the planet every year.

Time doesn't necessarily happen in chronological order.

Gordon Way's astonishment at being suddenly shot dead was nothing compared to his astonishment at what happened next.

I didn't notice I was being set upon by a pickpocket, which I am glad of, because I like to work only with professionals.

Space is unimaginably big.

Ha, but my life is a box of wormgears.

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.

I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it's art while it's being created.

These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings.

There are two things in particular that it [the computer industry] failed to foresee: one was the coming of the Internet(...); the other was the fact that the century would end.

I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe

The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.

Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much.

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

Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.