Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Douglas Adams
80 quotes
“When you are a student or whatever, and you can't afford a car, or a plane fare, or even a train fare, all you can do is hope that someone will stop and pick you up. At the moment we can't afford to go to other planets. We don't have the ships to take us there. There may be other people out there (I don't have any opinions about Life Out There, I just don't know) but it's nice to think that one could, even here and now, be whisked away just by hitchhiking.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement of 1984, as quoted in Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Companion (1988) by Neil Gaiman, p. 2
“You are disoriented. Blackness swims toward you like a school of eels who have just seen something that eels like a lot.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy text adventure game (1985), published by Infocom.
“Driving a Porsche in London is like bringing a Ming vase to a football game.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Companion (1988) by Neil Gaiman
“The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second rate technology, led them into it in the first place, and continues to do so today.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Guardian (1995), and in "Biting back at Microsoft" (5 June 2001)
“I think a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to other people about telephones. And a computer nerd therefore is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires TV program (1996)
“There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. 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, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge, UK, (1998)
“A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in The Daily Nexus (5 April 2000), reprinted in The Salmon of Doubt
“We don't have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at The University of California, videoed by UCTV (May 2001).
“The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened, it's just wonderful. And … the opportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Response to the question "What is it about science that really gets your blood running?" — as quoted in Richard Dawkins in his eulogy for Adams (17 September 2001)
“The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought "42 will do" I typed it out. End of story.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Why 42?" in alt.fan.douglas-adams USENET newsgroup (3 November 1993)
“AALST (n.) One who changes his name to be further to the front.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“ABOYNE (vb.) To beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly badly that none of his clever tactics or strategies are of any use to him.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“CLIXBY (adj.) Politely rude. Briskly vague. Firmly uninformative.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“FAIRYMOUNT (vb. n.) Polite word for buggery.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“LAXOBIGGING (ptcpl.vb.) Struggling to extrude an extremely large turd.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“SHOEBURYNESS (abs.n.) The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat which is still warm from somebody else's bottom”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“WOKING (vb.) To enter the kitchen with the precise determination to perform something only to forget what it is just before you do it.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The teacher usually learns more than the pupils. Isn't that true? "It would be hard to learn much less than my pupils," came a low growl from somewhere on the table, "without undergoing a pre-frontal lobotomy.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The door was the way to... to... The Door was The Way. Good. Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And that, apart from a flurry of sensational newspaper reports which exposed him as a fraud, then trumpeted him as the real thing so that they could have another round of exposing him as a fraud again and then trumpeting him as the real thing again, until they got bored and found a nice juicy snooker player to harass instead, was that.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This was the evening of the last day of Gordon Way's life … The weather forecast hadn't mentioned that, of course, that wasn't the job of the weather forecast, but then his horoscope had been pretty misleading as well. It had mentioned an unusual amount of planetary activity in his sign and had urged him to differentiate between what he thought he wanted and what he actually needed, and suggested that he should tackle emotional or work problems with determination and complete honesty, but had inexplicably failed to mention that he would be dead before the day was out.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“WFT-II was the only British software company that could be mentioned in the same sentence as such major U.S. companies as Microsoft or Lotus. The sentence would probably run along the lines of "WFT-II, unlike such major U.S. companies as Microsoft or Lotus ..." but it was a start.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Or maybe she decided that an evening with your old tutor would be blisteringly dull and opted for the more exhilarating course of washing her hair instead. Dear me, I know what I would have done. It's only lack of hair that forces me to pursue such a hectic social round these days.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The seat received him in a loose and distant kind of way, like an aunt who disapproves of the last fifteen years of your life and will therefore furnish you with a basic sherry, but refuses to catch your eye.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don’t. It’s like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don’t hurt it. Not even major surgery if it’s done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport." Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only exception of this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My name is Kate Schechter. Two 'c's, two 'h's, two 'e's, and also a 't', an 'r', and an 's'. Provided they're all there the bank won't be fussy about the order they come in. They never seem to know themselves.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The usual people tried to claim responsibility. First the IRA, then the PLO and the Gas Board. Even British Nuclear Fuels rushed out a statement to the effect that the situation was completely under control, that it was a one in a million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all, and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic, before finally having to admit that it wasn't actually anything to do with them at all.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In fact, a very similar phrase was invented to account for the sudden transition of wood, metal, plastic and concrete into an explosive condition, which was "nonlinear, catastrophic structural exasperation," or to put it another way--as a junior cabinet minister did on television the following night in a phrase which was to haunt the rest of his career--the check-in desk had just got "fundamentally fed up with being where it was.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You would probably not say that he was sleeping the sleep of the just, unless you meant the just asleep, but it was certainly the sleep of someone who was not fooling about when he climbed into bed of a night and turned off the light.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...he had a tremendous propensity for getting lost when driving. This was largely because of his "Zen" method of navigation, which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it. The results were more often surprising than successful, but he felt it was worth it for the sake of the few occasions when it was both.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Always expecting this and expecting that. May I recommend serenity to you? A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment. Learn to be one with the joy of the moment.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dirk was unused to making such a minuscule impact on anybody. He checked to be sure that he did have his huge leather coat and his absurd red hat on and that he was properly and dramatically silhouetted by the light of the doorway. He felt momentarily deflated and said, "Er..." by way of self-introduction, but it didn't get the boy's attention. He didn't like this. The kid was deliberately and maliciously watching television at him.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The explosion was now officially designated an "Act of God." But, thought Dirk, what god? And why? What god would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15:37 flight to Oslo?”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thor was the God of Thunder and, frankly, acted like it.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The device [electronic I Ching calculator] also functioned as an ordinary calculator, but only to a limited degree. It could handle any calculation which returned an answer of anything up to 4. ...anything above 4 it represented merely as "A Suffusion of Yellow." Dirk was not certain if this was a programming error or an insight beyond his ability to fathom, but he was crazy about it anyway, enough to hand over twenty pounds of ready cash for the thing.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a battered yellow Citroën 2CV which had had one careful owner but also three suicidally reckless ones.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My own strategy is to find a car, or the nearest equivalent, which looks as if it knows where it's going and follow it. I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere I needed to be.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...my methods of navigation have their advantage. I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What was the Sherlock Holmes principle? 'Once you have discounted the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' I reject that entirely. The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say 'Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that.'”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was constant talk about hewing things and ravaging things and splitting things asunder. Lots of big talk of things being mighty, and of things being riven, and of things being in thrall to other things, but very little attention given, as I now realise, to the laundry.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dennis Hutch had stepped up into the top seat when its founder had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Great Zaganza said: "You are very fat and stupid and persistently wear a ridiculous hat which you should be ashamed of.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It'd be like a bunch of rivers, the Amazon and the Mississippi and the Congo asking how the Atlantic Ocean might affect them… and the answer is, of course, that they won't be rivers anymore, just currents in the ocean.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For us, there is no longer a fundamental mystery about Life. It is all the process of extraordinary eruptions of information, and it is information which gives us this fantastically rich, complex world in which we live; but at the same time that we've discovered that we are destroying it at a rate that has no precedent in history, unless you go back to the point when we are hit by an asteroid!”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we think that the world is here for us we will continue to destroy it the way we have been destroying it, because we think we can do no harm.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source