So, my argument is that as we become more and more scientifically literate, it
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Perception
If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else.
—Douglas Adams
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
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
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: Learning, Experience
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Life
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Responsibility
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
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Man, Mankind, Water
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
One always overcompensates for disabilities. I’m thinking of having my entire body surgically removed.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Disability
We demand guaranteed rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Uncertainty
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
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
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
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
—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
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
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Goals
We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works.
—Douglas Adams
To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Brothers, Character, Service
One of the problems of taking things apart and seeing how they work – supposing you’re trying to find out how a cat works—you take that cat apart to see how it works, what you’ve got in your hands is a non-working cat. The cat wasn’t a sort of clunky mechanism that was susceptible to our available tools of analysis.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Cats
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
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Illusion, Time, One liners
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
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
What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can’t move, with no hope of rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn’t been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won’t be troubling you much longer.
—Douglas Adams
Topics: Challenges
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
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
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- John Fowles English Novelist
- George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) English Novelist
- George Orwell English Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
- Terry Pratchett English Fantasy Writer
- Arthur C. Clarke English Science-fiction Writer
- J. B. Priestley British Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
- Stephen Fry English Actor, Writer
- Peter Ustinov British Actor, Playwright
- Philip Pullman English Children’s Author, Dramatist
- Ian McEwan (b.1948) British Novelist, Short-story Writer
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