Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Douglas Adams (British Author)

Douglas Adams (1952–2001,) fully Douglas Noël Adams, was an English novelist and scriptwriter. He is best known for the mock science-fiction parodies that lampoon modern society with biting humor and pessimism. Known collectively as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, his works satirized contemporary life through a luckless protagonist who deals ineptly with societal forces beyond his control.

Born in Cambridge, Adams received an M.A. (1974) in English literature from the University of Cambridge, where he wrote comedy sketches for the performing arts society. He was a writer and script editor for the television series Doctor Who and wrote scripts for the BBC 1978–80.

Adams is best known for his humorous radio series (later adapted for television and film,) The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which he also wrote as a sequence of novels: The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979,) The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980,) Life, the Universe and Everything (1982,) So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984,) and Mostly Harmless (1992.) The five-book series sold more than 14 million copies internationally. The Hitchhiker’s Guide was adapted for television, theatre, and film and was used as the basis of an interactive computer program.

Adams also wrote Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988,) which satirizes the detective story genre. His other works include The Meaning of Liff (1983,) The Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book (1986,) and Last Chance to See (1990.)

Nick Webb wrote the official biography Wish You Were Here (2003.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Douglas Adams

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Space

Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Life

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
—Douglas Adams

Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.
—Douglas Adams

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Illusion, Time, One liners

One always overcompensates for disabilities. I’m thinking of having my entire body surgically removed.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Disability

It is known that there is an infinite number of worlds, but that not everyone is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so if every planet in the Universe has a populations of zero then the entire population of the Universe must also be zero, and any people you may actually meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: The Universe

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.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Self-Discovery

Can’t stand all these poisonous creatures, all these snakes and insects and fish and things. Wretched things, biting everybody. And then people expect me to tell them what to do about it. I’ll tell them what to do. Don’t get bitten in the first place.
—Douglas Adams

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Atheism

First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII—and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Writing, Just for Fun

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second- rate technology, led them into it in the first place.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Computers

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Possibilities

We demand guaranteed rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Uncertainty

All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Opinions

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory mentioned, which states that this has already happened.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Mystery, Discovery, Universe

A learning experience is one of those things that says, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.’
—Douglas Adams

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Humanity, Humankind

Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rules.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Speed, Gossip, Light

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.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Experience, Learning

There is an art, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Perspective, Flying

2,000 years ago one man got nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be if everyone was nice to each other for a change.
—Douglas Adams

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‘I could have thought of that’ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Thinking

So, my argument is that as we become more and more scientifically literate, it.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Perception

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Life

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.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Atheism

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Dreams

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.)
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Atheism

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Self-Discovery, Journeys

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Responsibility

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