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Famous Douglas Adams Quotes

“Science fiction that's just about people wandering around in space ships shooting each other with ray guns is very dull. I like it when it enables you to do fairly radical reinterpretations of human experience, just to show all the different interpretations that can be put on apparently fairly simple and commonplace events. That I find fun.”

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Author:Douglas Adams
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“People always make this totally artificial distinction between what is commercial and what is good. They quote that maxim "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the public's taste" and I think that's very wrongheaded. I like to believe the audience is actually intelligent, because it's made up of other people like yourself.”

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Author:Douglas Adams
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“The usual people tried to claim responsibility. First the IRA , then the PLO and the Gas Board. Even British Nuclear Fuels rushed out a statement to the effect that the situation was completely under control, that it was a one in a million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all, and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic, before finally having to admit that it wasn't actually anything to do with them at all.”

PeopleFirstsKidsChanceResponsibilitySituationMillionsNiceEffectsClaimsBritishNuclearStatementsBoardsFuelGasUsualSiteLocationExplosionsPicnicsIraOne In A MillionLeakage
Book:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
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“The reason why so many sects hang around airports looking for converts: they know that people there are at their most vulnerable and perplexed, and ready to accept any kind of guidance.”

PeopleKnowsKindReasonAcceptingAtheismReadyPositive AtheismVulnerableReason WhyGuidanceAirportsSectsPerplexed
Book:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
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“I don't like the idea of missionaries. In fact, the whole business fills me with fear and alarm. I don't believe in God, or at least not in the one we've invented for ourselves in England to fulfill our peculiarly English needs, and certainly not in the ones they've invented in America who supply their servants with toupees, television stations and, most importantly, toll-free telephone numbers. I wish that people who did believe in such things would keep them to themselves and not export them to the developing world.”

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Author:Douglas Adams
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“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport." Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only exception of this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.”

PeopleWholeEarthLanguageResultsEffortSpecialDesignExpressionDegreesCrossesTiredUglyAriseExceptionArchitectCoincidenceAirportsUglinessInfallibleLuggage
Book:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
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“We live in strange times. We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universes are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own. Being able to glance out into this bewildering complexity of infinite recursion and say things like, 'Oh, hi, Ed! Nice tan. How's Carol?' involves a great deal of filtering skill for which all conscious entities have eventually to develop a capacity in order to protect themselves from the contemplation of the chaos through which they seethe and tumble.”

PeopleWholeAbleOrderUniverseDealsNiceStrangeProtectSkillsConsciousShadowCapacityInfiniteChaosContemplationComplexityEntityGlancesCarolsStrange PlacesRecursionStrange Times
Book:Mostly Harmless
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“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

PeopleInspirationalTryingFunnyCommonMistakeDesignFoolWittyAppreciationFoolishEngineeringEngineersFoolishnessUnderestimateAprilFake PeopleIngenuityFooledComputer ProgrammingComputer ScienceGraphic DesignComputer LanguageUnderestimatedGood DesignSoftware DesignUser ExperienceArchitecture And DesignFools And FoolishnessHitchhikers Guide To The GalaxyHitchhikers GuideHitchhikingArchitecture DesignGraphic ArtistInspirational DesignInspirational Graphic DesignSimplicity In DesignApril Fools DayApril FoolsCivil EngineerIndustrial DesignFools DayDesign And ArtDesign InspirationCivil EngineeringFoolproofArt DesignFunny April Fools DayCreativity And DesignFunny April FoolsGraphic Design InspirationFunny Graphic DesignInspiring DesignCreative DesignEngineering InspirationalFord PrefectGraphic ArtFoolish MistakesFool Proof
Book:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five
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“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.”

PeopleHumansWisdomFunnyHuman BeingsAbilityEducationLearningTeachingBehaviorUniqueExperienceIntelligenceCleverRemarkableParadoxUniquenessHuman BehaviorHuman ExperienceParadoxicalAverage PersonSassyReluctanceHitchhikers GuideFaith In HumanityLast ChanceBeing UniqueWisdom And ExperienceUnique ExperiencesLearning From OthersStupidity And IntelligenceExperience And Learning
Book:Last Chance To See
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“Life... is like a grapefruit. Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.”

PeopleWellsLife IsHalfMiddleFoodBreakfastYellowWetGalaxyLife Is LikeHitchhikers Guide To The GalaxyHitchhikers GuideGrapefruitFord PrefectH2g2
Book:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy in Four Parts
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“And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.”

PeopleMenWorldYearsMadeTwoWould BeGirlNiceTreeThousandSittingOne ManBeing NiceThousand YearsThursdayHitchhikers GuideHappy PlaceHikerBe Nice To PeopleFord Prefect
Book:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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“Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.”

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Book:The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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“If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if it's done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.”

PeopleIfsFirstsHumansEndsDoneBodyRememberUniverseCoursesHurtSpaceCuttingHappenedEventsMajorsHealVersionsUncertaintyParadoxScarSurgeryTime And SpaceHuman BodyHere And ThereTissuesBruisesScar TissueCuts And Bruises
Book:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
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“One of the problems, and it's one which is obviously going to get worse, is that all the people at the party are either the children or the grandchildren or the great-grandchildren of the people who wouldn't leave in the first place, and because of all the business about selective breeding and regressive genes and so on, it means that all the people now at the party are either absolutely fanatical partygoers, or gibbering idiots, or, more and more frequently, both.”

PeopleFirstsMeanChildrenProblemPartyIdiotGenesGrandchildrenBreedingSelectiveGreat GrandchildrenSelective Breeding
Book:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy in Four Parts
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“David Attenborough has said that Bali is the most beautiful place in the world, but he must have been there longer than we were, and seen different bits, because most of what we saw in the couple of days we were there sorting out our travel arrangements was awful. It was just the tourist area, i.e. that part of Bali which has been made almost exactly the same as everywhere else in the world for the sake of people who have come all this way to see Bali.”

PeopleWorldWayHas BeensMadeSaidDifferentBeautifulBitsSawsCoupleAreasSakeAwfulArrangementsTouristsPlaces In The WorldBeautiful PlacesBaliSortingSorting Out
Author:Douglas Adams
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“Despite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn't think twice about buying something oven-ready become much more upset about a chicken that they've been on a boat with, so there is probably buried in the Western psyche a deep taboo about eating anything you've been introduced to socially.”

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Author:Douglas Adams
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“The Heart of Gold fled on silently through the night of space, now on conventional photon drive. Its crew of four were ill as ease knowing that they had been brought together not of their own volition or by simple coincidence, but by some curious perversion of physics- as if relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the relationships between atoms and molecules”

PeopleIfsHeartTogetherLawNightSimpleSpaceKnowingFourGoldIllPhysicsCuriousEaseAtomsConventionalCoincidenceCrewMoleculesSusceptiblePerversionVolitionPhotonsHeart Of Gold
Book:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five
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“Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.”

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Book:The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
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“This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time.”

PeopleProblemPlanetsUnhappyUnhappinessGalaxyLiving OnFunny MoneyAlways HappySelf HappinessAlways Be HappyHitchhikers Guide To The GalaxyHitchhikers GuideYou Make Me HappyHitchhikingUnhappy PeopleMoney HappinessBeing UnhappyHikerMoney And HappinessHe Makes Me Happy
Book:The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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“... The truth of the matter is, that most English people don't know how to make tea anymore either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the impression that the English are just generally clueless about hot stimulants.”

PeopleKnowsGivingMatterKnow HowDrinkHotCoffeeImpressionPityTeaInstantCluelessStimulantsInstant Coffee
Book:The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
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“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
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“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
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“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.”

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Book:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
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“Yes, I think I use the term radical rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as atheist some people will say, Don't you mean agnostic? I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one...etc., etc. It's easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal and that it's an opinion I hold seriously.”

PeopleIfsThinkingBelieveMeanFactsUseReligionTermDifferencesDealsOpinionEasierEvidenceAtheistConvincedRadicalBeing YourselfEtcSubtleAgnosticSignalsEmphasisReally MeanSubtle AtheistDescribe Yourself
Author:Douglas Adams
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“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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Book:The Deeper Meaning of Liff: A Dictionary of Things There Aren't Any Words for Yet--But There Ought to Be
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