Douglas Adams famous quotes

I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.
-- Douglas Adams

#Inspirational #Uplifting #Destiny

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
-- Douglas Adams

#Love #Inspirational #Hilarious

If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else.
-- Douglas Adams

#Trying #Want #Way

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—whilst 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

#Success #New York #War

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
-- Douglas Adams

#Funny #Witty #Fear

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

#Funny #God #Crazy

I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
-- Douglas Adams

#Inspirational #Life #Atheist

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.
-- Douglas Adams

#Cat #Science #Hands

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 which states that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams

#Funny #Education #Humor

Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
-- Douglas Adams

#Badass #Philosophy #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

#Education #Wisdom #Clever

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.
-- Douglas Adams

#Leadership #Money #Integrity

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

#Beauty #Beautiful #Atheist

Shee, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off.
-- Douglas Adams

#Fall #Guy #Wonder

There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.
-- Douglas Adams

#Thinking #People #Psychology

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
-- Douglas Adams

#Atheist #Intelligent #People

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, 'As pretty as an airport.
-- Douglas Adams

#Inspirational #Funny #Travel

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
-- Douglas Adams

#Jobs #People #President

What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
-- Douglas Adams

#Doe #Matter #Does It Matter

I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.
-- Douglas Adams

#Thinking #Honest #Problem

The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome.
-- Douglas Adams

#World #Complexity #Richness

Alone of all the races on earth, they seem to be free from the 'Grass is Greener on the other side of the fence' syndrome, and roundly proclaim that Australia is, in fact, the other side of that fence.
-- Douglas Adams

#Race #Australia #Earth

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

#Jobs #America #Political

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

#Thinking #Mirrors #Giving

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.
-- Douglas Adams

#People #Unhappy #Problem

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer
-- Douglas Adams

#Funny #Witty #Humor

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
-- Douglas Adams

#Inspirational #Happiness #Money

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
-- Douglas Adams

#Funny #Science #Light

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

#Opinion #Logic #Argument

Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose.
-- Douglas Adams

#Believe #Paradox #Wells

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.
-- Douglas Adams

#Being Yourself #Atheist #Believe

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
-- Douglas Adams

#Humor #Science #Thinking

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
-- Douglas Adams

#Family #Integrity #Patriotic

A cup of tea would restore my normality.
-- Douglas Adams

#Tea #Cups Of Tea #Cups

In the old days, writers used to sit in front of a typewriter and stare out of the window. Nowadays, because of the marvels of convergent technology, the thing you type on and the window you stare out of are now the same thing.
-- Douglas Adams

#Technology #Typewriters #Window

We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win.
-- Douglas Adams

#Winning #Psychology #Care

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

#Life #Regret #Mistake

Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?
-- Douglas Adams

#Humorous #Humor #Mad

The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.
-- Douglas Adams

#Advice #Quality #Offers

It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's point of view without the proper training.
-- Douglas Adams

#Views #Empathy #Training

The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?
-- Douglas Adams

#Civilization #Lunch #Survival

And as he drove on, the rainclouds dragged down the sky after him, for, though he did not know it, Rob McKenna was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him, and to water him.
-- Douglas Adams

#Rain #Holiday #Clouds

Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was. "Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.
-- Douglas Adams

#Missing #Tea #Important

Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe.
-- Douglas Adams

#Music #Humans #Universe

He learned to communicate with birds and discovered their conversation was fantastically boring. It was all to do with windspeed, wingspans, power-to-weight ratios and a fair bit about berries.
-- Douglas Adams

#Bird #Berries #Weight

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious.
-- Douglas Adams

#Habit #Found #Obvious

One is never alone with a rubber duck.
-- Douglas Adams

#Ducks #Rubber

In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
-- Douglas Adams

#Real #Men #Bravery

Even a manically depressed robot is better to talk to than nobody.
-- Douglas Adams

#Robots

I'd far rather be happy than right any day.
-- Douglas Adams

#Inspirational #Happiness #You Make Me Happy

My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre and that I am therefore excused from saving universes.
-- Douglas Adams

#Funny #Humor #Doctors

The Answer to the Great Question... Of Life, the Universe and Everything... Is... Forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
-- Douglas Adams

#Two #Deep Thought #Majesty

So the hours are pretty good then?' he resumed. The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths. Yeah,' he said, 'but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.
-- Douglas Adams

#Depth #Hours #Yeah

A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment.
-- Douglas Adams

#Disappointment #Expectations #Sorrow

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.
-- Douglas Adams

#Science #Technology #Want

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.
-- Douglas Adams

#Ego #Important #Want

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
-- Douglas Adams

#Distance #Lying #Science

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

#Technology #Knights #Ideas

Generally, old media don't die. They just have to grow old gracefully. Guess what, we still have stone masons. They haven't been the primary purveyors of the written word for a while now of course, but they still have a role because you wouldn't want a TV screen on your headstone.
-- Douglas Adams

#Media #Roles #Want

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

#Life #Tired #Thinking

But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting.
-- Douglas Adams

#Children #Thinking #Names

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

#Life #Retirement #Genius

My universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.
-- Douglas Adams

#Eye #Ears #Hearsay

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
-- Douglas Adams

#War #Communication #Race

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.
-- Douglas Adams

#Alcohol #Brain #Gold

and we’ll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere … and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.
-- Douglas Adams

#Intelligent #Rocks #Guy

The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
-- Douglas Adams

#Reality #Statistics #Guides