Douglas Adams
~may he rest in peace~
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
Time, we know, is relative. You can travel light years through the
stars and back, and if you do it at the speed of light then, when
you return, you may have aged mere seconds while your twin brother
or sister will have aged twenty, thirty, forty or however many years
it is, depending on how far you traveled. This will come to you as
a profound shock, particularly if you didn't know you had a twin
brother or sister.
[His] study was a total mess, like the results of an explosion in a
public library.
There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers exactly
what the Universe if for and why it is here, it will instantly
disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable. There is another which states that this has already
happened.
A common mistake people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete
fools.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so,
nothing continued to happen.
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.
I don't believe it. Prove it to me and I still won't believe it.
If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their
mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and
observation he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they
don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start
working.
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival,
Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and
Where phases.
For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question, "How
can we eat?" The second by the question, "Why do we eat?" And the third
by the question, "Where shall we do lunch?"
Dennis Hutch had stepped up into the top seat when its founder had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila.
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.
When it's fall in New York, the air smells as if someone's been frying goats in it, and if you are keen to breathe the best plan is to open a window and stick your head in a building.
There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind.
Arthur hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realised there was a contradiction there and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
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.
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
The first ten million years were the worst, and the second ten million, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.
I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis.
If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.
Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that "job satisfaction"? 'Cos I don't.
The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat...
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
You should send that in to the "Reader's Digest". They've got a page for people like you.
That young girl is one of the least enlightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, 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 the average population of all the planets in the universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
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