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Douglas Adams Quotes

Total quotes: 54
“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Tagged: Life, The Universe, humor, Creation, Building the Earth
“The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Advice, Life, Living, How To Handle Advice
“See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Proof, Truth, Science
“I'd far rather be happy than right any day.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Happiness, Being Right, Being Happy, Smart vs. Happy
“This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays. ”
— Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy
Tagged: Thursday, Humour, Stress, Boredom
“The Universe is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore. Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.”
— Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Tagged: Life, Understanding, Knowledge, Ignorance, Bias
“If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Ego, Mankind, The Human Condition
“All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: The Universe, Life
“'Sir,' I said to the universe, 'I exist.' 'That,' said the universe, 'creates no sense of obligation in me whatsoever.’”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Life, Meaning, Obligation, Mankind, Human Nature, Autonomy, Existentialism
“We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying.”
— Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
Tagged: Life, Earth, humans, Mankind
“It is of course perfectly natural to assume that everyone else is having a far more exciting time than you.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Happiness, humanity, Mankind
“I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Questioning
“Nobleness was one word for making a fuss about the trivial inevitabilities of life, but there were others.”
— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Tagged: Life
“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“You’re paid a lot and you’re not happy, so the first thing you do is buy stuff that you don’t want or need—for which you need more money.”
— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Tagged: Happiness, Money, Society
“Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else becomes eerily easy.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Opportunity, Life, Meaning
“You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.’”
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Tagged: Learning, Learning Experience, Experience
“We will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: normalcy
“And then, just when you think that you have experienced all the wonders that this world has to offer, you round a peak and suddenly think you're doing the whole thing over again, but this time on drugs.”
— Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
“He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Genius, Intelligence, Competence, Foolishness
“God's Final Message to His Creation:
'We apologize for the inconvenience.'”
— Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Tagged: God, Religion, Creation
“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”
— Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Tagged: impossible, Possibility, Pessimism
“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, Last Chance to See
Tagged: Learning, Mankind, Human Nature
“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Perception, Self-Perception, Reality
“If there's any real truth, it's that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Universe, Maniacs
“"The Guide says there is an art to flying", said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."”
— Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Tagged: humor, Flying, Success, Failure
“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, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Life, Reality, Dream, Illusion
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Foolishness, Fools, Mankind, Design, Development
“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, Life, the Universe and Everything(Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Tagged: Life, Afterlife, Religion, prayer, humor
“'How can I tell,' said the man, 'that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?’”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Reality, Perception, The Past
“How do you know you're having fun if there's no one watching you have it?”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression ‘As pretty as an airport.”
— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Tagged: first lines of books
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Tagged: Destiny, Fate, Life, Intentions, Off-Track
“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Tagged: Presidency, President, Politics
“Let the past hold on to itself and let the present move forward into the future.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Past, present, Future
“It was his subconscious which told him this---that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.”
— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Tagged: Subconscious, Mind, Brain
“'The light works,' he said, indicating the window, 'the gravity works,' he said, dropping a pencil on the floor. 'Anything else we have to take our chances with.’ ”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“You live and learn. At any rate, you live.”
— Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Tagged: Life, Experience, Living
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