Top 100 Douglas Adams Quotes
#1. We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
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#2. Hey, er ... " said Zaphod, "what's your name?"
The man looked at them doubtfully.
"I don't know. Why, do you think I should have one? It seems very odd to
give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name.
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#4. But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving
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#5. He had got himself a life. Now he had to find a purpose in it.
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#6. You see, Earthman, they really are particularly clever hyper-intelligent pandimensional beings. Your planet and people have formed the matrix of an organic computer running a ten-million-year research program ... . Let me tell you the whole story. It'll take a little time.
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#7. Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now here he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth.
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#8. What's that?" he yelped. "Don't worry," said Ford, "they haven't started yet." "Thank God for that," said Arthur, and relaxed. "It's probably just your house being knocked down,
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#11. Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.
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#12. The only thing nicer than a phone that didn't ring all the time (or indeed at all) was six phones that didn't ring all the time (or indeed at all).
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#13. I like the cover," he said. "Don't Panic. It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day.
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#14. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win.
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#15. I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere I needed to be.
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#16. The Nutri-Matic was designed and manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaints department now covers all the major landmasses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star system. Arthur
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#17. I asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no he'd come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.
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#18. But so successful was this venture that Magrathea itself soon became the richest planet of all time and the rest of the Galaxy was reduced to abject poverty. And so the system broke down, the Empire collapsed,
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#19. Where do you get inspiration for your books?
I tell myself I can't have another cup of coffee till I thought of an idea.
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#20. 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.
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#21. The whole Poghril tribe had died out from famine except for one last man who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later.
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#22. On a waiter's check pad," said Slartibartfast, "reality and unreality collide on such a fundamental level that each becomes the other and anything is possible, within certain parameters.
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#23. Imagine" he said, "never even thinking, 'We are alone,' simply because it has never occurred to you to think that there's any other way to be.
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#24. He would insult the Universe. That is, he would insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his teeth over) in alphabetical order.
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#25. The computers were index-linked to the Galactic stock-market prices, you see, so that we'd all be revived when everybody else had rebuilt the economy enough to afford our rather expensive services.
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#26. The driver wound down the window and leaned out. "Had a crash then?" he shouted at them. "Yes." "Ha!" he said and drove on
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#28. I've been talking about how electronic books will come, and how important they will be, and all of a sudden Stephen King publishes one. I feel a complete idiot, as it should have been me.
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#30. Arthur and Trillian had the fixed expressions of rabbits on a night road who think that the best way of dealing with approaching headlights is to stare them out. Zaphod
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#31. Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.
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#32. My universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.
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#33. Who should play the lead role in a film about me? Dunno. Danny De Vito? Jeff Goldblum? Meryl Streep? Someone of that kind.
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#34. Arthur prodded the mattress nervously and then sat on it himself: in fact he had very little to be nervous about, because all mattresses grown in the swamps of Sqornshellous Zeta are very thoroughly killed and dried before being put to service. Very few have ever come to life again.
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#36. And then, just when you think that you have experienced all the wonders that this world has to offer, you round a peak and suddenly think you're doing the whole thing over again, but this time on drugs.
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#37. Rule Six: The winning team shall be the first team that wins.
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#38. Ah ... ! What's happening? it thought. Er, excuse me, who am I? Hello? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Calm down, get a grip now ... oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it?
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#39. If you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language.
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#40. They would appear," said Ford doubtfully, "to have turned into a bowl of petunias and a very surprised-looking whale
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#41. Did I do anything wrong today," he said, "or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?
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#42. When I hear Mozart, I understand what it is to be a human being; when I hear Beethoven, I understand what it is to be Beethoven; but when I hear Bach, understand what it is to be the Universe.
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#43. Nobleness was one word for making a fuss about the trivial inevitabilities of life, but there were others.
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#44. Yes. I much prefer it here. So much less reputable, so much more fraught.
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#45. Don't blame you, said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.
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#46. There was a sort of gallery structure in the roof space which held a bed and also a bathroom which you could actually swing a cat in. But only if it was a reasonably patient cat and didn't mind a few nasty cracks about the head.
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#47. I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say.
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#48. Impact minus twenty seconds, guys . . ." said the computer. "Then turn the bloody engines back on!" bawled Zaphod. "Oh, sure thing, guys," said the computer.
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#49. Their minds sang with the ecstatic knowledge that either what they were doing was completely and utterly and totally impossible or that physics had a lot of catching up to do.
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#50. Would you like me to go and stick my head in a bucket of water?
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#51. And that's why the American habit of bringing a teacup, a tea bag, and a pot of hot water to the table is merely the perfect way of making a thin, pale, watery cup of tea that nobody in their right mind would want to drink.
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#52. How do you feel?" he asked him. "Like a military academy," said Arthur. "Bits of me keep on passing out.
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#53. The moment at which two people, approaching from opposite ends of a long passageway, recognize each other and immediately pretend they haven t. This is to avoid the ghastly embarrassment of having to continue recognizing each other the whole length of the corridor.
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#54. CLUN (n.) A leg which has gone to sleep and has to be hauled around after you.
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#55. On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was a small tray, on which say three bone china cups and saucers, a bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot full of the best tea Arthur had ever tasted and a small printed note saying Wait.
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#56. I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.
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#57. Fifteen years was a long time to be stranded anywhere, particularly somewhere as mind-boggingly dull as Earth.
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#58. The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. Trin
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#59. 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.
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#60. no correspondence is intended between any institutions or characters in this book and any real institutions or people living, dead, or wandering the night in ghostly torment.
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#61. No," said Arthur, "no," he added thoughtfully. "No," he added again, even more thoughtfully. "What?" he said at last.
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#62. Looked as if the various parts of its more or less humanoid body didn't quite fit properly.
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#63. What, are you, crazy?' 'It's a possibility I haven't ruled out yet', said Zaphod quietly. 'I know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.
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#65. Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.
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#66. Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single fact took the scientific world by storm.
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#67. This man is the bee's knees, Arthur, he is the wasp's nipples. He is, I would go so far as to say, the entire set of erogenous zones of every major flying insect of the Western world.
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#68. The Somebody Else's Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what's more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people's natural disposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain.
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#69. Life," said Marvin, "don't talk to me about life.
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#70. Two contestants would sit either side of a table, with a glass in front of each of them.
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#71. The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat.
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#72. The horse, it must be said, was quite surprised.
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#73. Fenchurch had red mullet and said it was delicious.
Arthur had a swordfish steak and said it made him angry. He grabbed a passing waitress by the arm and berated her.
"Why's this fish so bloody good?" he demanded, angrily.
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#74. This is flight 121 to Los Angeles. If your travel plans today do not include Los Angeles, now would be the perfect time to disembark.
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#75. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears.
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#76. They both sat on the pavement and watched with a certain unease as huge children bounced heavily along the sand and wild horses thundered through the sky taking fresh supplies of reinforced railings to the Uncertain Areas.
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#77. Odd," agreed Reg. "I've certainly never come across any irreversible mathematics involving sofas. Could be a new field.
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#79. She shook her head in puzzlement.
'You're very strange,' she said.
'No, I'm very ordinary,' said Arthur,'but some very strange things have happened to me. You could say I'm more differed from than differing.
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#80. Oh, er, well the hatchway in front of us will open in a few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect and asphyxiate. If you take a lungful of air with you you can last for up to thirty seconds, of course.
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#81. I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He's not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.
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#82. We no longer think of chairs as technology; we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn't worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often 'crash' when we tried to use them.
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#83. He lay still and quiet. He absorbed the enveloping darkness, slowly relaxed his limbs from end to end, eased and regulated his breathing, gradually cleared his mind of all thought, closed his eyes, and was completely incapable of getting to sleep.
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#84. It's all right,' he insisted, 'I'm perfectly well. Thought I heard, well, a noise
that startled me. But it was nothing. Just overcome with the tea fumes, I expect
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#85. Generally, old media don't die. They just have to grow old gracefully. Guess what, we still have stone masons. They haven't been the primary purveyors of the written word for a while now of course, but they still have a role because you wouldn't want a TV screen on your headstone.
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#86. The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.
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#87. Ford had another Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the drink which has been described as the alcoholic equivalent of a mugging - expensive and bad for the head.
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#88. Evolution? they said to themselves, Who needs it?,
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#89. Vogons are not above a little bribery and corruption in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds,
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#90. Aberystwyth (n.)
A nostalgic yearning which is in itself more pleasant than the thing being yearned for.
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#91. [..] the actual building was old and dilapidated and remained standing more out of habit than from any inherent structural integrity [..]
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#92. I don't think anybody would argue now that the Internet isn't becoming a major factor in our lives. However, it's very new to us. Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people 'over the Internet.'
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#93. the only thing that really gets hurt when you try and change time is yourself.
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#94. Zaphod had never heard of this. He believed that he had heard of all the fun things in the Galaxy, so he assumed that the Total Perspective Vortex was not fun.
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#95. Believe me, it is a great deal better to find cast-iron proof that you're innocent than to languish in a cell hoping that the police
who already think you're guilty
will find it for you.
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#96. After five seconds there was a click, and the entire Universe was there in the box with him.
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#97. Arthur had almost given up. That is to say, he was not going to give up. He was absolutely not going to give up. Not now. Not ever. But if he had been the sort of person who was going to give up, this was probably the time he would have done it.
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#98. As soon as Mr. Prosser realized that he was substantially the loser after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew it.
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#99. A computer chatted to itself in alarm as it noticed an airlock open and close itself for no apparent reason.
This was because Reason was in fact out to lunch.
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#100. And then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks.
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