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Famous Douglas Adams Quotes

“For Children: You will need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It's quite a simple difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week, whereas a fried egg comes out of a chicken. Like most things, of course, it isn't quite that simple. The fried egg isn't properly a fried egg until it's been put in a frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn't do to a Friday, of course, though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a Thursday, if you like, or on a cooker. It's all rather complicated, but it makes a kind of sense if you think about it for a while.”

HumourFridayFried Egg
Book:The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
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“If they were going to be like that, then I just wished they hadn't actually been German. It was too easy. Too obvious. It was like coming across an Irishman who actually was stupid, a mother-in-law who actually was fat, or an American businessman who actually did have a middle initial and smoked a cigar. You feel as if you are unwillingly performing in a music-hall sketch and wishing you could rewrite the script. If Helmut and Kurt had been Brazilian or Chinese or Latvian or anything else at all, they could then have behaved in exactly the same way and it would have been surprising and intriguing and, more to the point from my perspective, much easier to write about. Writers should not be in the business of propping up stereotypes. I wondered what to do about it, decided that they could simply be Latvians if I wanted, and then at last drifted off peacefully to worrying about my boots.”

HumourStereotypesGermanDouglas Adams
Book:Last Chance To See
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“After a moment or two a man in brown crimplene looked in at us, did not at all like the look of us and asked us if we were transit passengers. We said we were. He shook his head with infinite weariness and told us that if we were transit passengers then we were supposed to be in the other of the two rooms. We were obviously very crazy and stupid not to have realized this. He stayed there slumped against the door jamb, raising his eyebrows pointedly at us until we eventually gathered our gear together and dragged it off down the corridor to the other room. He watched us go past him shaking his head in wonder and sorrow at the stupid futility of the human condition in general and ours in particular, and then closed the door behind us. The second room was identical to the first. Identical in all respects other than one, which was that it had a hatchway let into one wall. A large vacant-looking girl was leaning through it with her elbows on the counter and her fists jammed up into her cheekbones. She was watching some flies crawling up the wall, not with any great interest because they were not doing anything unexpected, but at least they were doing something. Behind her was a table stacked with biscuits, chocolate bars, cola, and a pot of coffee, and we headed straight towards this like a pack of stoats. Just before we reached it, however, we were suddenly headed off by a man in blue crimplene, who asked us what we thought we were doing in there. We explained that we were transit passengers on our way to Zaire, and he looked at us as if we had completely taken leave of our senses. 'Transit passengers? he said. 'It is not allowed for transit passengers to be in here.' He waved us magnificently away from the snack counter, made us pick up all our gear again, and herded us back through the door and away into the first room where, a minute later, the man in the brown crimplene found us again. He looked at us. Slow incomprehension engulfed him, followed by sadness, anger, deep frustration and a sense that the world had been created specifically to cause him vexation. He leaned back against the wall, frowned, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. 'You are in the wrong room,' he said simply. `You are transit passengers. Please go to the other room.' There is a wonderful calm that comes over you in such situations, particularly when there is a refreshment kiosk involved. We nodded, picked up our gear in a Zen-like manner and made our way back down the corridor to the second room. Here the man in blue crimplene accosted us once more but we patiently explained to him that he could fuck off.”

HumourAirportDouglas AdamsZaire
Book:Last Chance To See
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“No," he said, "look, it's very, very simple ... all I want ... is a cup of tea. You are going to make one for me. Keep quiet and listen." And he sat. He told the Nutri-Matic about India, he told it about China, he told it about Ceylon. He told it about broad leaves drying in the sun. He told it about silver teapots. He told it about summer afternoons on the lawn. He told it about putting in the milk before the tea so it wouldn't get scalded. He even told it (briefly) about the history of the East India Company. "So that's it, is it?" said the Nutri-Matic when he had finished. "Yes," said Arthur, "that is what I want." "You want the taste of dried leaves in boiled water?" "Er, yes. With milk." "Squirted out of a cow?" "Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose ...”

HumourScience Fiction
Author:Douglas Adams
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“The mice were furious." [...] "Oh yes," said the old man mildly. "Yes well so I expect were the dogs and cats and duckbilled platypuses, but..." "Ah, but they hadn't paid for it you see, had they?" "Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?" [...] "Earthman, the planet you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice. It was destroyed five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it was built, and we've got to build another one." Only one word registered with Arthur. "Mice?" he said. "Indeed Earthman." "Look, sorry - are we talking about the little white furry things with the cheese fixation and women standing on tables screaming in early sixties sit coms?" Slartibartfast coughed politely. "[...] These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vast hyperintelligent pandimensional beings. The whole business with the cheese and the squeaking is just a front." The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued. "They've been experimenting on you, I'm afraid.”

HumourScience FictionBritish
Book:The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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“A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till it could be proved conclusively to him that he wasn't a fish. The bass player was busy machine-gunning his bedroom and the drummer was nowhere on board. Frantic inquiries led to the discovery that he was standing on a beach on Santraginus V over a hundred light years away where, he claimed, he had been happy for over half an hour now and had found a small stone that would be his friend.”

HumorHappinessMusicFriendsLogicHitchhikers Guide To The GalaxyRock Stars
Book:The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
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“I don't know what this great thing I'm meant to be doing is, and it looks to me as if I was supposed not to know. And I resent that, right? "The old me knew. The old me cared. Fine, so far so good. Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain--my own brain--and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it. [...] "But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't he, by changing my brain? Okay, that was his choice. This new me has its own choices to make, and by a strange coincidence those choices involve not knowing and not caring about this big number, whatever it is. That's what he wanted, that's what he got. "Except this old self of mine tired to leave himself in control, leaving orders for me in the bit of my brain he locked off. Well, I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear them. That's my choice. I'm not going to be anybody's puppet, particularly not my own. [...] "The old me is dead! [...] Killed himself! The dead shouldn't hang about trying t0 interfere with the living.”

Thought164 165
Book:The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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“She felt faintly embarrassed by the sheer profusion of things she had for putting in baths, but she was for some reason incapable of passing any chemist’s or herb shop without going in to be seduced by some glass-stoppered bottle of something blue or green or orange or oily that was supposed to restore the natural balance of some vague substance she didn’t even know she was supposed to have in her pores.”

BathsFemalesBath Soap
Book:The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
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“Something pink? Something with extra Vitamin B? Vitamin B12? B13? Just the number of things with different types of Vitamin B in them was an embarrassment of choice itself. There were powders as well as oils, tubes of gel, even packets of some kind of pungent -smelling seed that was meant to be good for some obscure part of you in some arcane way.”

BathsFemalesVitamin BBath Soap
Book:The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
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“At some distance down the corridor it seemed suddenly as if somebody started to beat on a bass drum. He listened to it for a few seconds and realized that it was just his heart beating. He listened for a few seconds more and realized that it wasn’t his heart beating, it was somebody down the corridor beating on a bass drum.”

FunnyFearSpaceHumourScience FictionBritishEnglishHitchhikers Guide To The GalaxyDouglas AdamsDrum
Book:Life, the Universe and Everything
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“At that moment the dull sound of a rumbling crash from outside filtered through the low murmur of the pub, through the sound of the jukebox, through the sound of the man next to Ford hiccuping over the whiskey Ford had eventually bought him. Arthur choked on his beer, leaped to his feet. "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," said Ford, downing his last pint. "What?" shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford's spell was broken. Arthur looked wildly around him and ran to the window. "My God, they are! They're knocking my house down. What the hell am I doing in the pub, Ford?" "It hardly makes any difference at this stage," said Ford, "let them have their fun.”

HouseNoisyArthurDouglas AdamsFord PrefectArthur DentFordDouglasBulldozerAdamsDentPrefect
Book:The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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“Laden with all these new possessions, I go and sit at a table. And don't ask me what the table was like because this was some time ago and I can't remember. It was probably round." [...] "So let me give you the layout. Me sitting at the table, on my left, the newspaper, on my right, the cup of coffee, in the middle of the table, the packet of biscuits." "I see it perfectly." "What you don't see," said Arthur, "because I haven't mentioned him yet, is the guy sitting at the table already. He is sitting there opposite me." "What's he like?" "Perfectly ordinary. Briefcase. Business suit. He didn't look," said Arthur, "as if he was about to do anything weird." "Ah. I know the type. What did he do?" "He did this. He leaned across the table, picked up the packet of biscuits, tore it open, took one out, and . . ." "What?" "Ate it." "What?" "He ate it." Fenchurch looked at him in astonishment. "What on earth did you do?" "Well, in the circumstances I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do. I was compelled," said Arthur, "to ignore it." "What? Why?" "Well, it's not the sort of thing you're trained for, is it? I searched my soul, and discovered that there was nothing anywhere in my upbringing, experience, or even primal instincts to tell me how to react to someone who has quite simply, calmly, sitting right there in front of me, stolen one of my biscuits." "Well, you could. . ." Fenchurch thought about it. "I must say I'm not sure what I would have done either. So what happened?" "I stared furiously at the crossword," said Arthur, "couldn't do a single clue, took a sip of coffee, it was too hot to drink, so there was nothing for it. I braced myself. I took a biscuit, trying very hard not to notice," he added, "that the packet was already mysteriously open. . ." "But you're fighting back, taking a tough line." "After my fashion, yes. I ate the biscuit. I ate it very deliberately and visibly, so that he would have no doubt as to what it was I was doing. When I eat a biscuit," said Arthur, "it stays eaten." "So what did he do?" "Took another one. Honestly," insisted Arthur, "this is exactly what happened. He took another biscuit, he ate it. Clear as daylight. Certain as we are sitting on the ground." Fenchurch stirred uncomfortably. "And the problem was," said Arthur, "that having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around. What do you say? 'Excuse me... I couldn't help noticing, er . . .' Doesn't work. No, I ignored it with, if anything, even more vigor than previously." "My man..." "Stared at the crossword again, still couldn't budge a bit of it, so showing some of the spirit that Henry V did on St. Crispin's Day . ." "What?" "I went into the breach again. I took," said Arthur, "another biscuit. And for an instant our eyes met." "Like this?" "Yes, well, no, not quite like that. But they met. Just for an instant. And we both looked away. But I am here to tell you," said Arthur, "that there was a little electricity in the air. There was a little tension building up over the table. At about this time." "I can imagine."” "We went through the whole packet like this. Him, me, him, me . . ." "The whole packet?" "Well, it was only eight biscuits, but it seemed like a lifetime of biscuits we were getting through at this point. Gladiators could hardly have had a tougher time." "Gladiators," said Fenchurch, "would have had to do it in the sun. More physically gruelling." "There is that. So. When the empty packet was lying dead between us the man at last got up, having done his worst, and left. I heaved a sigh of relief, of course. "As it happened, my train was announced a moment or two later, so I finished my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper . . ." "Yes?" "Were my biscuits." "What?" said Fenchurch. "What?" "True." "No!”

TrainBiscuitsCrossword
Book:So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
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“Tell me the story," said Fenchurch firmly. "You arrived at the station." "I was about twenty minutes early. I'd got the time of the train wrong." "Get on with it." Fenchurch laughed. "So I bought a newspaper, to do the crossword, and went to the buffet to get a cup of coffee." "You do the crossword?" "Yes." "Which one?" "The Guardian usually." "I think it tries to be too cute. I prefer The Times. Did you solve it?" "What?" "The crossword in the Guardian." "I haven't had a chance to look at it yet," said Arthur, "I'm still trying to buy the coffee." "All right then. Buy the coffee." "I'm buying it. I am also," said Arthur, "buying some biscuits." "What sort?" "Rich Tea." "Good Choice." "I like them. Laden with all these new possessions, I go and sit at a table. And don't ask me what the table was like because this was some time ago and I can't remember. It was probably round." "All right." "So let me give you the layout. Me sitting at the table. On my left, the newspaper. On my right, the cup of coffee. In the middle of the table, the packet of biscuits." "I see it perfectly." "What you don't see," said Arthur, "because I haven't mentioned him yet, is the guy sitting at the table already. He is sitting there opposite me." "What's he look like?" "Perfectly ordinary. Briefcase. Business suit. He didn't look," said Arthur, "as if he was about to do anything weird." "Ah. I know the type. What did he do?" "He did this. He leaned across the table, picked up the packet of biscuits, tore it open, took one out, and..." "What?" "Ate it." "What?" "He ate it." Fenchurch looked at him in astonishment. "What on earth did you do?" "Well, in the circumstances I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do. I was compelled," said Arthur, "to ignore it." "What? Why?" "Well, it's not the sort of thing you're trained for is it? I searched my soul, and discovered that there was nothing anywhere in my upbringing, experience or even primal instincts to tell me how to react to someone who has quite simply, calmly, sitting right there in front of me, stolen one of my biscuits." "Well, you could..." Fenchurch thought about it. "I must say I'm not sure what I would have done either. So what happened?" "I stared furiously at the crossword," said Arthur. "Couldn't do a single clue, took a sip of coffee, it was too hot to drink, so there was nothing for it. I braced myself. I took a biscuit, trying very hard not to notice," he added, "that the packet was already mysteriously open..." "But you're fighting back, taking a tough line." "After my fashion, yes. I ate a biscuit. I ate it very deliberately and visibly, so that he would have no doubt as to what it was I was doing. When I eat a biscuit," Arthur said, "it stays eaten." "So what did he do?" "Took another one. Honestly," insisted Arthur, "this is exactly what happened. He took another biscuit, he ate it. Clear as daylight. Certain as we are sitting on the ground." Fenchurch stirred uncomfortably. "And the problem was," said Arthur, "that having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject a second time around. What do you say? "Excuse me...I couldn't help noticing, er..." Doesn't work. No, I ignored it with, if anything, even more vigor than previously." "My man..." "Stared at the crossword, again, still couldn't budge a bit of it, so showing some of the spirit that Henry V did on St. Crispin's Day..." "What?" "I went into the breach again. I took," said Arthur, "another biscuit. And for an instant our eyes met." "Like this?" "Yes, well, no, not quite like that. But they met. Just for an instant. And we both looked away. But I am here to tell you," said Arthur, "that there was a little electricity in the air. There was a little tension building up over the table. At about this time." "I can imagine.”

HumorFunnyLolBiscuitsDouglas Adams
Author:Douglas Adams
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“The deep roar of the ocean. The break of waves on farther shores that thought can find. The silent thunders of the deep. And from among it, voices calling, and yet not voices, humming trillings, wordlings, and half-articulated songs of thought. Greetings, waves of greetings, sliding back down into the inarticulate, words breaking together. A crash of sorrow on the shores of Earth. Waves of joy on--where? A world indescribably found, indescribably arrived at, indescribably wet, a song of water. A fugue of voices now, clamoring explanations, of a disaster unavertable, a world to be destroyed, a surge of helplessness, a spasm of despair, a dying fall, again the break of words. And then the fling of hope, the finding of a shadow Earth in the implications of enfolded time, submerged dimensions, the pull of parallels, the deep pull, the spin of will, the hurl and split of it, the fight. A new Earth pulled into replacement, the dolphins gone. Then stunningly a single voice, quite clear. "This bowl was brought to you by the Campaign to Save the Humans. We bid you farewell." And then the sound of long, heavy, perfectly gray bodies rolling away into an unknown fathomless deep, quietly giggling.”

OceanDolphins589
Book:The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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“GENERAL NOTE TO MYSELF - Douglas Adams Writing isn’t so bad really when you get through the worry. Forget about the worry, just press on. Don’t be embarrassed about the bad bits. Don’t strain at them, give yourself time, you can come back and do it again in the light of what you discover about the story later on. It's better to have pages and pages of material to work through and often maybe find an unexpected shape in that you can then craft and put it for good use, rather than one manically reworked paragraph or sentence. But writing can be good. You attack it, don’t let it attack you. You can get pleasure out of it. You can certainly do very well for yourself with it...!”

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Author:Douglas Adams
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“Vogonci. Ne bi ni prstom makli čak ni da spase vlastitu baku od prožrdljive bubozdrobne zvijeri s Traaala bez naređenja u tri primjerka, preporučeno poslanih s povratnicom, poslanih natrag, traženih, izgubljenih, pronađenih, podnesenih na javnu raspravu, ponovno izgubljenih i konačno pokopanih u mekom močvarnom tlu i recikliranih kao upaljač.”

Hitchhikers Guide To The GalaxyVogons
Book:The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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“The major problem - one of the major problems, for there are several - on of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary; anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they're not. And somewhere in the shadows behind them - who? Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?”

GovernmentPresidentLeadersRuling
Book:The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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“Now, 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 that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and 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; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That's an idea we're so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it's kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!”

ScienceReligionAtheism
Author:Douglas Adams
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“Religion... has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever... If someone votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I must [not] move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'I respect that'... Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be.”

ReligionAtheism
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“It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian 'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kill cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds. What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound importance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.”

LinguisticsDouglas AdamsGin And TonicStructural Linguistics
Book:The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
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