Quotes by Douglas Adams

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
– Douglas Adams
Arthur hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realised there was a contradiction there and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
– Douglas Adams
For a moment, nothing happened.Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
– Douglas Adams
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
He inched his way up the corridor as if he would rather be yarding his way down it.
– Douglas Adams
He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally uncomfortable on each.
– Douglas Adams
His study was a total mess, like the results of an explosion in a public library.
– Douglas Adams
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
Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner.
– Douglas Adams
I don't believe it. Prove it to me and I still won't believe it.
– Douglas Adams
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
– Douglas Adams
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?
– Douglas Adams
I'm spending a year dead for tax reasons.
– Douglas Adams
If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandonded this theory in favor of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.
– Douglas Adams
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
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
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
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
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
– 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
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
Life is wasted on the living.
– Douglas Adams
Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.
– Douglas Adams
Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor, at least no one worth speaking of.
– Douglas Adams
One always overcompensates for disabilities. I'm thinking of having my entire body surgically removed.
– Douglas Adams
That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.
– Douglas Adams
The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.
– Douglas Adams
The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
– Douglas Adams
The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.
– Douglas Adams
The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
– Douglas Adams
The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.
– Douglas Adams
The moment at which two people, approaching from opposite ends of a long passageway, recognize each other and immediately pretend they haven t. This is to avoid the ghastly embarrassment of having to continue recognizing each other the whole length of the corridor.
– Douglas Adams
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
– Douglas Adams
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
– Douglas Adams
Time is bunk.
– 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
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
– Douglas Adams
We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.
– Douglas Adams
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
– Douglas Adams
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
– Douglas Adams
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
It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear.
– Douglas Adams
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody 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
The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.
– Douglas Adams
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
– Douglas Adams
Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of.
– Douglas Adams
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
– 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 chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
– Douglas Adams
Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart.
– Douglas Adams
He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
– Douglas Adams