Quotessence
Home / Authors / Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllHitchhikers Guide To The GalaxyHitchhikers GuideIfsSaidPeopleHumorKnowsThinkingUniverseGalaxy

Famous Douglas Adams Quotes

“The invention of the scientific method and science is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that.”

IfsThinkingWorldLifeIdeasSeemsScienceFightingUnderstandingChallengesPowerfulHard WorkIntellectualAgreeMethodInventionMost PowerfulFrameworkPremisesAnother DayScientific MethodInvestigating
Author:Douglas Adams
Create image

“God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining.”

NeedsReligionAtheismAmountAtheistExplanationExplainingPhilosophy Of ReligionReligion GodReligious PhilosophyInsurmountablePhilosophy And ReligionMorality And ReligionReligion WarReligion And War
Book:The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Create image

“People will then often say, 'But surely it's better to remain an Agnostic just in case?' This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I've been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)”

PeopleIfsThinkingKindFactsTurnsLevelsBehindsCasesAtheismHairConversationWorshipCrossesFingersAtheistEdgesImpressedAgnosticThere Is No GodTheismSplittingThere Being No GodSillinessMuddleBehind Your Back
Book:The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Create image

“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.”

PeopleWantedGivenWishWonderHellPathWork OutDevicesBypassFinding Your Path
Book:The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story
Create image

“The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any signs of leaving. The problem of when the drink is going to run out is, however, going to have to be faced one day. The planet over which they are floating is no longer the planet it was when they first started floating over it. It is in bad shape”

FirstsStillsShowsProblemRunningPartyVisionGenerationsPlanetsDrinkFutureOne DayShapesLeavingDestructiveOver ItFourthFloatingSustainable Development
Author:Douglas Adams
Create image

“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.”

IfsKnowsYearsMayLightTimeStarsBrotherReturnTwentiesMereProfoundSpeedThirtyShockFortySecondsRelativeTwinsTraveledSisterSpeed Of LightLight YearsTwin BrotherTravel Light
Book:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five
Create image

“Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

KnowsMenStillsWinningStruggleTerribleLengthRoughOddsGalaxyBreadthTowelsSlumsHitchhikers Guide To The GalaxyHitchhikers GuideHitchhiking
Book:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five
Create image

“Plenty of people did not care for him much, but then there is a huge difference between disliking somebody - maybe even disliking them a lot - and actually shooting them, strangling them, dragging them through the fields and setting their house on fire.”

PeopleCareHouseDifferencesFireFieldsHugeSettingSettingsPlentyShootingStrangling
Book:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Create image

“If on the other hand he went to pay his respects to The Door and it wasn't there . . . what then? The answer, of course, was very simple. He had a whole board of circuits for dealing with exactly this problem, in fact this was the very heart of his function. He would continue to believe in it whatever the facts turned out to be, what else was the meaning of Belief? The Door would still be there, even if the Door was not.”

IfsBelieveHeartStillsWholeFactsProblemHandsCoursesBeliefSimpleAnswersPayDoorsFunctionPositive AtheismBoardsCircuits
Book:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Create image

“Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that, were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech and writing is evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed and totally un****ed-up personality.”

WritingWellsMatterUseWould BeCasesExpressionPersonalityHealthySpeechShotsEvidenceEverydayExtremesDecadesPoliteRelaxedLungsExplicitPerpetratorsSpeech And Writing
Book:The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Create image

“Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in restaurants.”

WayScienceTimeUnderstandingSpaceNumbersMovementDependsBehaviorAbsolutesMathematicsMathMathematicalRevolutionaryRestaurantsNew WaysObservers
Book:The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Create image

“A hole had just appeared in the Galaxy. It was exactly a nothingth of a second long, a nothingth of an inch wide, and quite a lot of million light years from end to end. As it closed up [...] Two hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs fell out of it...materializing in a large woobly heap on the famine-struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system. The whole Poghril tribe had died out from famine except for one last man who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later.”

MenYearsLongTwoEndsWholeLightLastsMillionsWeekLandThousandHundredDiedStupidityWideNineHolesThirtyEggsInchesTribesGalaxyFaminePoisoningCholesterolLight Years
Author:Douglas Adams
Create image