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Famous Douglas Adams Quotes

“In fact, a very similar phrase was invented to account for the sudden transition of wood, metal, plastic and concrete into an explosive condition, which was "nonlinear, catastrophic structural exasperation," or to put it another way--as a junior cabinet minister did on television the following night in a phrase which was to haunt the rest of his career--the check-in desk had just got "fundamentally fed up with being where it was.”

WayFactsNightCareersConditionsTelevisionAccountsFollowingWoodsChecksMinistersPhrasesFedsTransitionMetalsConcretePlasticDesksAnother WayJuniorsCabinetsExplosivesFed UpExasperationNonlinear
Author:Douglas Adams
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“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

WorldWayOrderBornNaturalCareersTechnologyFiveNormalOrdinaryExcitingCome UpReactionsRevolutionaryThirtyFifteenNatural Order
Author:Douglas Adams
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“When you're cruising down the road in the fast lane and you lazily sail past a few hard-driving cars and are feeling pretty pleased with yourself and then accidently change down from fourth to first instead of third thus making your engine leap out of your hood in a rather ugly mess, it tends to throw you off stride in much the same way that this remark threw Ford Prefect off his.”

WayFirstsHardFeelingsPastCarThirdsUglyDrivingMessLeapEnginesFourthSailRemarksLanesHoodDown The RoadStrideDriving CarsFord PrefectFast LaneFeeling Pretty
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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“Just supposing," he said, "just supposing" --he didn't know what was coming next, so he thought he'd just sit back and listen--"that there was some extraordinary way in which you were very important to me, and that, though you didn't know it, I was very important to you, but it all went for nothing because we only had five miles and I was a stupid idiot at knowing how to say something very important to someone I've only just met and not crash into lorries a the same time, what would you say..." He paused, helplessly, and looked at her. "I should do.”

KnowsWayShouldSaidImportantNextKnowingFiveStupidMetsExtraordinaryMilesIdiotCrashSupposingLorry
Book:So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
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“In fact, Lig never formally resigned his editorship—he merely left his office late one morning, and has never returned since. Though well over a century has now passed, many members of the Guide staff still retain the romantic notion that he has simply popped out for a sandwich and will yet return to put in a solid afternoon's work. Strictly speaking, all editors since Lig Lury Jr., have therefore been designated acting editors, and Lig's desk is still preserved the way he left it, with the addition of a small sign that says LIG LURY, JR., EDITOR, MISSING, PRESUMED FED.”

WayWellsStillsFactsLeftActingMorningCenturyMissingReturnMembersOfficeLateNotionGuidesFedsEditorsAfternoonDesksStaffSandwichesResigned
Book:The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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“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
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“He had extracted himself from the Cambridge one-way system by the usual method, which involved going round and round it faster and faster until he achieved a sort of escape velocity and flew off at a tangent in a random direction, which he was now trying to identify and correct for.”

WayTryingInvolvedMethodRoundsOne WayFasterUsualFlewVelocityCambridge
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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