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A Computer Chatted To Itself In Alarm As It Noticed An Airlock Open And Close Itself For No Apparent Reason. This Was Because Reason Was In Fact Out To Lunch.

-Douglas Adams

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A Computer Chatted To

Douglas Adams

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A Computer Chatted To Itself In Alarm As It Noticed An Airlock Open And Close Itself For No Apparent Reason. This Was Because Reason Was In Fact Out To Lunch.

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In Many Of The More Relaxed Civilizations On The Outer Eastern Rim Of The Galaxy, The Hitch-hiker's Guide Has Already Supplanted The Great Encyclopaedia Galactica As The Standard Repository Of All Knowledge And Wisdom, For Though It Has Many Omissions And Contains Much That Is Apocryphal, Or At Least Wildly Inaccurate, It Scores Over The Older, More Pedestrian Work In Two Important Respects. First, It Is Slightly Cheaper; And Secondly It Has The Words Don't Panic Inscribed In Large Friendly Letters On Its Cover.

Fiordland, A Vast Tract Of Mountainous Terrain That Occupies The South-west Corner Of South Island, New Zealand, Is One Of The Most Astounding Pieces Of Land Anywhere On God's Earth, And One's First Impulse, Standing On A Cliff Top Surveying It All, Is Simply To Burst Into Spontaneous Applause.

'totally Mad,' He Said, 'utter Nonsense. But We'll Do It Because It's Brilliant Nonsense.'

Yes, It Is True That Sometimes Unusually Intelligent And Sensitive Children Can Appear To Be Stupid. But Stupid Children Can Sometimes Appear To Be Stupid As Well. I Think That's Something You Might Have To Consider.

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."

I Rarely End Up Where I Was Intending To Go, But Often I End Up Somewhere I Needed To Be.

A Common Mistake That People Make When Trying To Design Something Completely Foolproof Is To Underestimate The Ingenuity Of Complete Fools.

All Opinions Are Not Equal. Some Are A Very Great Deal More Robust, Sophisticated And Well Supported In Logic And Argument Than Others.

David Attenborough Has Said That Bali Is The Most Beautiful Place In The World, But He Must Have Been There Longer Than We Were, And Seen Different Bits, Because Most Of What We Saw In The Couple Of Days We Were There Sorting Out Our Travel Arrangements Was Awful. It Was Just The Tourist Area, I.e. That Part Of Bali Which Has Been Made Almost Exactly The Same As Everywhere Else In The World For The Sake Of People Who Have Come All This Way To See Bali.

If We See You Smoking We Will Assume You Are On Fire And Take Appropriate Action.

Cigarette Smoke

Grown Men, He Told Himself, In Flat Contradiction Of Centuries Of Accumulated Evidence About The Way Grown Men Behave, Do Not Behave Like This.

So This Is It," Said Arthur, "we Are Going To Die." "yes," Said Ford, "except... No! Wait A Minute!" He Suddenly Lunged Across The Chamber At Something Behind Arthur's Line Of Vision. "what's This Switch?" He Cried. "what? Where?" Cried Arthur, Twisting Round. "no, I Was Only Fooling," Said Ford, "we Are Going To Die After All.

Who Is This God Person Anyway?

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Hitchhikers Guide

Time Doesn't Necessarily Happen In Chronological Order.

There Is An Art To The Business Of Making Sandwiches Which It Is Given To Few Ever To Find The Time To Explore In Depth. It Is A Simple Task, But The Opportunities For Satisfaction Are Many And Profound.

We No Longer Think Of Chairs As Technology, We Just Think Of Them As Chairs. But There Was A Time When We Hadn't Worked Out How Many Legs Chairs Should Have, How Tall They Should Be, And They Would Often "crash" When We Tried To Use Them. Before Long, Computers Will Be As Trivial And Plentiful As Chairs And We Will Cease To Be Aware Of The Things. In Fact I'm Sure We Will Look Back On This Last Decade And Wonder How We Could Ever Have Mistaken What We Were Doing With Them For "productivity"

When You're Cruising Down The Road In The Fast Lane And You Lazily Sail Past A Few Hard-driving Cars And Are Feeling Pretty Pleased With Yourself And Then Accidently Change Down From Fourth To First Instead Of Third Thus Making Your Engine Leap Out Of Your Hood In A Rather Ugly Mess, It Tends To Throw You Off Stride In Much The Same Way That This Remark Threw Ford Prefect Off His.

Who Should Play The Lead Role In A Film About Me? Dunno. Danny De Vito? Jeff Goldblum? Meryl Streep? Someone Of That Kind.

I Think Media Are At Their Most Interesting Before Anybody's Thought Of Calling Them Art, When People Still Think They're Just A Load Of Junk.

Some Say That The Universe Is Made So That When We Are About To Understand It It Changes Into Something Even More Incomprehensible. And Then There Are Those Who Say That This Has Already Happened.

Shoeburyness (abs.n.) The Vague Uncomfortable Feeling You Get When Sitting On A Seat Which Is Still Warm From Somebody Else's Bottom.

Uncomfortable Feeling

Anything That Thinks Logically Can Be Fooled By Something Else That Thinks At Least As Logically As It Does.

He Actually Caught Himself Saying Things Like "yippee," As He Pranced Ridiculously Round The House.

What Does It Matter? Science Has Achieved Some Wonderful Things, Of Course, But I'd Far Rather Be Happy Than Right Any Day.

It's Not The Fall That Kills You; It's The Sudden Stop At The End.

Space Is Unimaginably Big.

The Future Of Computer Power Is Pure Simplicity.

The World Wide Web Is The Only Thing I Know Of Whose Shortened Form Takes Three Times Longer To Say Than What It's Short For.

Life,” Said Marvin Dolefully, “loathe It Or Ignore It, You Can’t Like It.

Why?' Is Always The Most Difficult Question To Answer. You Know Where You Are When Someone Asks You 'what's The Time?' Or 'when Was The Battle Of 1066?' Or 'how Do These Seatbelts Work That Go Tight When You Slam The Brakes On, Daddy?' The Answers Are Easy And Are, Respectively, 'seven-thirty In The Evening,' 'ten-fifteen In The Morning,' And 'don't Ask Stupid Questions.

Difficult Questions

Beauty Doesn't Have To Be About Anything. What's A Vase About? What's A Sunset Or A Flower About? What, For That Matter, Is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto About?

He Shifted His Weight From Foot To Foot, But It Was Equally Uncomfortable On Each.

The Technology Involved In Making Anything Invisible Is So Infinitely Complex That Nine Hundred And Ninety-nine Billion, Nine Hundred And Ninety-nine Million, Nine Hundred And Ninety-nine Thousand, Nine Hundred And Ninety-nine Times Out Of A Trillion It Is Much Simpler And More Effective Just To Take The Thing Away And Do Without It.

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 And Repair.

Space Is Really Big-really Big.

He Picked Up The Letter Q And Hurled It Into A Distant Privet Bush Where It Hit A Young Rabbit. The Rabbit Hurtled Off In Terror And Didn’t Stop Till It Was Set Upon And Eaten By A Fox Which Choked On One Of Its Bones And Died On The Bank Of A Stream Which Subsequently Washed It Away. During The Following Weeks Ford Perfect Swallowed His Pride And Struck Up A Relationship With A Girl Who Had Been A Personnel Officer On Golgafrincham, And He Was Terribly Upset When She Suddenly Passed Away As A Result Of Drinking Water From A Pool That Had Been Polluted By The Body Of A Dead Fox.

Assumptions Are The Things We Don't Know We're Making.

For A Moment He Felt Good About This. A Moment Or Two Later He Felt Bad About Feeling Good About It. Then He Felt Good About Feeling Bad About Feeling Good About It And Satisfied, Drove On Into The Night.

Goosnargh," Said Ford Prefect, Which Was A Special Betelgeusian Word He Used When He Knew He Should Say Something But Didn't Know What It Should Be.

I Wrote An Ad For Apple Computer: "macintosh - We Might Not Get Everything Right, But At Least We Knew The Century Was Going To End".

The Encyclopedia Galactica Defines A Robot As A Mechanical Apparatus Designed To Do The Work Of A Man. The Marketing Division Of The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Defines A Robot As "your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Defines The Marketing Devision Of The Sirius Cybernetic Corporation As "a Bunch Of Mindless Jerks Who'll Be The First Against The Wall When The Revolution Comes.

I Begged Her, 'please Don't Leave Me Stranded In The Middle Of Some Primitive Zarking Forest With No Medical Help And A Head Injury. I Could Be In Serious Trouble And So Could She.'" "what Did She Say?" "she Hit Me On The Head With The Rock Again," Ford Responded Curtly. "i Think I Can Confirm That Was My Daughter." "sweet Kid." "you Have To Get To Know Her," Said Arthur. "she Eases Up, Does She?" "no, But You Get A Better Sense Of When To Duck.

On The Delivery Plate Of The Nutri-matic Drink Synthesizer Was A Small Tray, On Which Say Three Bone China Cups And Saucers, A Bone China Jug Of Milk, A Silver Teapot Full Of The Best Tea Arthur Had Ever Tasted And A Small Printed Note Saying "wait.

I Have Always Been Absurdly, Ridiculously Tall. To Give You An Idea- When We Went On School Trips To Interesting And Improving Places, The Form-master Wouldn't Say "meet Under The Clock Tower," Or "meet Under The War Memorial," But "meet Under Adams.

One Is Never Alone With A Rubber Duck.

Anything Invented Before Your Fifteenth Birthday Is The Order Of Nature. That's How It Should Be. Anything Invented Between Your Th And Th Birthday Is New And Exciting, And You Might Get A Career There. Anything Invented After That Day, However, Is Against Nature And Should Be Prohibited.

Dirk Turned On The Car Wipers, Which Grumbled Because They Didn't Have Quite Enough Rain To Wipe Away, So He Turned Them Off Again. Rain Quickly Speckled The Windscreen. He Turned On The Wipers Again, But They Still Refused To Feel That The Exercise Was Worthwhile, And Scraped And Squeaked In Protest.

The Reason Why So Many Sects Hang Around Airports Looking For Converts: They Know That People There Are At Their Most Vulnerable And Perplexed, And Ready To Accept Any Kind Of Guidance.

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.

So, The World Is Fine. 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. That’s What We Need To Think About.

Yes. They Are The Words That Finally Turned Me Into The Hermit I Have Now Become. It Was Quite Sudden. I Saw Them, And I Knew What I Had To Do." The Sign Read: "hold Stick Near Center Of Its Length. Moisten Pointed End In Mouth. Insert In Tooth Space, Blunt End Next To Gum. Use Gentle In-out Motion." "it Seemed To Me," Said Wonko The Sane, "that Any Civilization That Had So Far Lost Its Head As To Need To Include A Set Of Detailed Instructions For Use In A Package Of Toothpicks, Was No Longer A Civilization In Which I Could Live And Stay Sane.

Curiously Enough, The Only Thing That Went Through The Mind Of The Bowl Of Petunias As It Fell Was Oh No, Not Again. Many People Have Speculated That If We Knew Exactly Why The Bowl Of Petunias Had Thought That We Would Know A Lot More About The Nature Of The Universe Than We Do Now.

Reality Is Hopelessly Inaccurate.

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.

But Nowadays Everybody's A Comedian, Even The Weather Girls And Continuity Announcers. We Laugh At Everything. Not Intelligently Anymore, Not With Sudden Shock, Astonishment, Or Revelation, Just Relentlessly And Meaninglessly. No More Rain Showers In The Desert, Just Mud And Drizzle Everywhere, Occasionally Illuminated By The Flash Of Paparazzi.

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.

I Can See We're In For A Fabulous Evening's Apocalypse.

If On The Other Hand He Went To Pay His Respects To The Door And It Wasn't There . . . What Then? The Answer, Of Course, Was Very Simple. He Had A Whole Board Of Circuits For Dealing With Exactly This Problem, In Fact This Was The Very Heart Of His Function. He Would Continue To Believe In It Whatever The Facts Turned Out To Be, What Else Was The Meaning Of Belief? The Door Would Still Be There, Even If The Door Was Not.

Hey, This Is Terrific!" He Said. "someone Down There Is Trying To Kill Us!" "terrific," Said Arthur. "but Don't You See What This Means?" "yes. We Are Going To Die." "yes, But Apart From That." "apart From That?!" "it Means We Must Be On To Something!" "how Soon Can We Get Off It?

Everything You See Or Hear Or Experience In Any Way At All Is Specific To You. You Create A Universe By Perceiving It, So Everything In The Universe You Perceive Is Specific To You.

For As Long As He Could Remember, He’d Suffered From A Vague Nagging Feeling Of Being Not All There.

The Ultimate Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything Is...42!

One Of The Most Important Things You Learn From The Internet Is That There Is No 'them' Out There. It’s Just An Awful Lot Of 'us.'

Space Is Big. Really 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, But That's Just Peanuts To Space.

I Think The Problem, To Be Quite Honest With You, Is That You've Never Actually Known What The Question Is.

All Through My Life I've Had This Strange Unaccountable Feeling That Something Was Going On In The World, Something Big, Even Sinister, And No One Would Tell Me What It Was." "no," Said The Old Man, "that's Just Perfectly Normal Paranoia. Everyone In The Universe Has That.

Perfectly Normal

Here's What The Encyclopedia Galactica Has To Say About Alcohol. It Says That Alcohol Is A Colourless Volatile Liquid Formed By The Fermentation Of Sugars And Also Notes Its Intoxicating Effect On Certain Carbon-based Life Forms.

Ha, But My Life Is A Box Of Wormgears.

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.

What I Need... Is A Strong Drink And A Peer Group.

The Invention Of The Scientific Method And Science Is, I'm Sure We'll All Agree, The Most Powerful Intellectual Idea, The Most Powerful Framework For Thinking And Investigating And Understanding And Challenging The World Around Us That There Is, And It Rests On The Premise That Any Idea Is There To Be Attacked. If It Withstands The Attack Then It Lives To Fight Another Day And If It Doesn't Withstand The Attack Then Down It Goes. Religion Doesn't Seem To Work Like That.

He Had Got Himself A Life. Now He Had To Find A Purpose In It.

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.

He Was A Man Who Was Charged With The Work He Did In Life Because He Was Not One To Ask Questions — Not So Much On Account Of Any Natural Quality Of Discretion As Because He Simply Could Never Think Of Any Questions To Ask.

I Don’t Know What I’m Looking For.” “what Not?” “because … Because … I Think It Might Be Because If I Knew I Wouldn’t Be Able To Look For Them.

My Favorite Piece Of Information Is That Branwell Brontë, Brother Of Emily And Charlotte, Died Standing Up Leaning Against A Mantelpiece, In Order To Prove It Could Be Done. This Is Not Quite True, In Fact. My Absolute Favorite Piece Of Information Is The Fact That Young Sloths Are So Inept That They Frequently Grab Their Own Arms And Legs Instead Of Tree Limbs, And Fall Out Of Trees.

And So The Problem Remained; Lots Of The People Were Mean, And Most Of Them Were Miserable, Even The Ones With Digital Watches.

If Somebody Votes For A Party That You Don't Agree With, You're Free To Argue About It As Much As You Like. ... But On The Other Hand, If Somebody Says, 'i Mustn't Move A Light Switch On A Saturday,' You Say, 'fine, I Respect That.'

I've Never Understood All This Fuss People Make About The Dawn. I've Seen A Few And They're Never As Good As The Photographs, Which Have The Additional Advantage Of Being Things You Can Look At When You're In The Right Frame Of Mind, Which Is Usually Around Lunchtime.

No One Really Knows What Mattresses Are Meant To Gain From Their Lives Either. They Are Large, Friendly, Pocket-sprung Creatures That Live Quiet Private Lives In The Marshes Of Sqornshellous Zeta. Many Of Them Get Caught, Slaughtered, Dried Out, Shipped Out And Slept On. None Of Them Seems To Mind This And All Of Them Are Called Zem.

Humans Think They Are Smarter Than Dolphins Because We Build Cars And Buildings And Start Wars Etc., And All That Dolphins Do Is Swim In The Water, Eat Fish And Play Around. Dolphins Believe That They Are Smarter For Exactly The Same Reasons.

Plenty Of People Did Not Care For Him Much, But Then There Is A Huge Difference Between Disliking Somebody - Maybe Even Disliking Them A Lot - And Actually Shooting Them, Strangling Them, Dragging Them Through The Fields And Setting Their House On Fire.

A Computer Chatted To Itself In Alarm As It Noticed An Airlock Open And Close Itself For No Apparent Reason. This Was Because Reason Was In Fact Out To Lunch.

The More Susan Waited, The More The Doorbell Didn't Ring. Or The Phone.

The Mere Thought Hadn't Even Begun To Speculate About The Merest Possibility Of Crossing My Mind.

The Guide Is Definitive. Reality Is Frequently Inaccurate.

Listen, Three Eyes," He Said, "don't You Try To Outweird Me, I Get Stranger Things Than You Free With My Breakfast Cereal.

‎if You Ever Find You Need Help Again, You Know, If You're In Trouble, Need A Hand Out Of A Corner..." "yeah?" "please Don't Hesitate To Get Lost.

Life Is Wasted On The Living.

The Simple Truth Is That Interstellar Distances Will Not Fit Into The Human Imagination.

You Barbarians!' He Yelled. 'i'll Sue The Council For Every Penny It's Got! I'll Have You Hung, Drawn And Quartered! And Whipped! And Boiled...until...until...until...until You've Had Enough.' Ford Was Running After Him. Very Very Fast. 'and Then I Will Do It Again!' Yelled Arthur, 'and When I've Finished I Will Take All The Little Bits, And I Will Jump On Them!

See First, Think Later, Then Test. But Always See First. Otherwise You Will Only See What You Were Expecting. Most Scientists Forget That.

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.

You Make Me Happy

Dirk Was, For One Of The Few Times In A Life Of Exuberantly Prolific Loquacity, Wordless.

For A Moment, Nothing Happened. Then, After A Second Or So, Nothing Continued To Happen.

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

The Kakapo Is An Extremely Fat Bird. A Good-sized Adult Will Weigh About Six Or Seven Pounds, And Its Wings Are Just About Good For Waggling A Bit If It Thinks It's About To Trip Over Something - But Flying Is Out Of The Question. Sadly, However, It Seems That Not Only Has The Kakapo Forgotten How To Fly, But It Has Forgotten That It Has Forgotten How To Fly. Apparently A Seriously Worried Kakapo Will Sometimes Run Up A Tree And Jump Out Of It, Whereupon It Flies Like A Brick And Lands In A Graceless Heap On The Ground.

If I Were Not An Atheist, I Think I Would Have To Be A Catholic Because If It Wasn't The Forces Of Natural Selection That Designed Fish, It Must Have Been An Italian.

The Gorillas Are Not Yet Sufficiently Advanced In Evolutionary Terms To Have Discovered The Benefits Of Passports, Currency-declaration Forms, And Official Bribery, And Therefore Tend To Wander Backward And Forward Across The Border As And When Their Beastly, Primitive Whim Takes Them.

We All Like To Congregate At Boundary Conditions. Where Land Meets Water. Where Earth Meets Air. Where Bodies Meet Mind. Where Space Meets Time. We Like To Be On One Side, And Look At The Other.

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.

It Was One Of Those Pictures That Children Are Supposed To Like But Don't. Full Of Endearing Little Animals Doing Endearing Things, You Know?

If I Want To Read Something That's Really Giving Me Something Serious And Fundamental To Think About, About The Human Condition, If You Like, Or What We're All Doing Here, Or What's Going On, Then I'd Rather Read Something By A Scientist In The Life Sciences, Like Richard Dawkins, For Instance.

Even The Evil-looking Bird Perched On A Rod In The Bar Had Stopped Screeching Out The Names And Addresses Of Local Contract Killers, Which Was A Service It Provided For Free.

How Do I Know The Past Is Not A Fiction Conceived To Reconcile The Difference Between My State Of Mind And The Present.

The First Ten Million Years Were The Worst," Said Marvin, "and The Second Ten Million Years, They Were The Worst Too. The Third Ten Million Years I Didn't Enjoy At All. After That I Went Into A Bit Of A Decline.

But While Nature Has Considerable Resilience, There Is A Limit To How Far That Resilience Can Be Stretched. No One Knows How Close To The Limit We Are Getting. The Darker It Gets, The Faster We're Driving

Mark Carwardine's Role, Essentially, Was To Be The One Who Knew What He Was Talking About. My Role, And One For Which I Was Entirely Qualified, Was To Be An Extremely Ignorant Non-zoologist To Whom Everything That Happened Would Come As A Complete Surprise.

I Tend To Get Very Suspicious Of Anything That Thinks It's Art While It's Being Created.

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.

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.

...and The Renewed Shock Had Nearly Made Him Spill His Drink. He Drained It Quickly Before Anything Serious Happened To It. He Then Had Another Quick One To Follow The First One Down And Check That It Was All Right.

Believe Me, It Is A Great Deal Better To Find Cast-iron Proof That You're Innocent Than To Languish In A Cell Hoping That The Police---who Already Think You're Guilty---will Find It For You.

I Tend Not To Read Or Watch Science Fiction, Particularly Not Comedy Science Fiction. The Point Is That If It's Less Good Than What I Do, There's No Point In Reading It, If It's Better Than What I Do It Makes Me Depressed

The Point Is, You See," Said Ford, "that There Is No Point In Driving Yourself Mad Trying To Stop Yourself Going Mad. You Might Just As Well Give In And Save Your Sanity For Later.

In Cases Of Major Discrepancy Its Always Reality Thats Got It Wrong ... Reality Is Frequently Inaccurate.

It Takes A Long Time Before We Really Get To Grips With This [darwin's 'on The Origin Of Species'] And Begin To Understand It, Because Not Only Does It Seem Incredible And Thoroughly Demeaning To Us, But It's Yet Another Shock To Our System To Discover That Not Only Are We Not The Centre Of The Universe And We're Not Made By Anything, But We Started Out As Some Kind Of Slime And Got To Where We Are Via Being A Monkey. It Just Doesn't Read Well.

Stotting Is Jumping Upward With All Four Legs Simultaneously. My Advice: Do Not Die Until You've Seen A Large Black Poodle Stotting In The Snow.

Ford Prefect Suppressed A Little Giggle Of Evil Satisfaction, Realized That He Had No Reason To Suppress It, And Laughed Out Loud, A Wicked Laugh.

Mc Donalds He Thought. There's No Longer Any Such Thing As A Mc Donalds Hamburger. He Passed Out. When He Came Around Seconds Later He Found He Was Sobbing For His Mother.

Marvin Trudged On Down The Corridor, Still Moaning. "...and Then Of Course I've Got This Terrible Pain In All The Diodes Down My Left Hand Side..." "no?" Said Arthur Grimly As He Walked Along Beside Him. "really?" "oh Yes," Said Marvin, "i Mean I've Asked For Them To Be Replaced But No One Ever Listens." "i Can Imagine.

Well The Hours Are Good...' ... 'but Now You Come To Mention It, Most Of The Actual Minutes Are Pretty Lousy.

What A Wonderfully Exciting Cough,' Said The Little Man, Quite Startled By It, 'do You Mind If I Join You?' And With That He Launched Into The Most Extraordinary And Spectacular Fit Of Coughing Which Caught Arthur So Much By Surprise That He Started To Choke Violently, Discovered He Was Already Doing It And Got Thoroughly Confused.

Cyberspace Is - Or Can Be - A Good, Friendly And Egalitarian Place To Meet.

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish.

Democracies Have

But For A Moment Dirk Had A Sense Of Inifinite Loss And Sadness That Somewhere Among The Frenzy Of Information Noise That Daily Rattled The Lives Of Men He Thought He Might Have Heard A Few Notes That Denoted The Movements Of Gods.

You May Not Instantly See Why I Bring The Subject Up, But That Is Because My Mind Works So Phenomenally Fast, And I Am At A Rough Estimate Thirty Billion Times More Intelligent Than You. Let Me Give You An Example. Think Of A Number, Any Number.” “er, Five,” Said The Mattress. “wrong,” Said Marvin. “you See?

There Are Some Oddities In The Perspective With Which We See The World.

The Answer To The Great Question... Of Life, The Universe And Everything... Is... Forty-two,' Said Deep Thought, With Infinite Majesty And Calm.

I Refuse To Answer That Question On The Grounds That I Don't Know The Answer

Zaphod Beeblebrox, Adventurer, Ex-hippie, Good-timer (crook? Quite Possibly), Manic Self-publicist, Terrible Bad At Personal Relationships, Often Thought To Be Completely Out To Lunch.

The Problem Is, Or Rather One Of The Problems, For There Are Many, A Sizeable Proportion Of Which Are Continually Clogging Up The Civil, Commercial, And Criminal Courts In All Areas Of The Galaxy, And Especially, Where Possible, The More Corrupt Ones, This. The Previous Sentence Makes Sense. That Is Not The Problem. This Is: Change. Read It Through Again And You'll Get It.

My Universe Is My Eyes And My Ears. Anything Else Is Hearsay.

Not Unnaturally, Many Elevators Imbued With Intelligence And Precognition Became Terribly Frustrated With The Mindless Business Of Going Up And Down, Up And Down, Experimented Briefly With The Notion Of Going Sideways, As A Sort Of Existential Protest, Demanded Participation In The Decision-making Process And Finally Took To Squatting In Basements Sulking. An Impoverished Hitch-hiker Visiting Any Planets In The Sirius Star System These Days Can Pick Up Easy Money Working As A Counsellor For Neurotic Elevators.

Beppu (n.) The Triumphant Slamming Shut Of A Book After Reading The Final Page.

God's Final Message To His Creation: 'we Apologize For The Inconvenience.

To Summarize The Summary Of The Summary: People Are A Problem.

In The Center Lay The Exploded Carcass Of A Lonely Sperm Whale That Hadn't Lived Long Enough To Be Disappointed With Its Lot.

There’s No Point In Acting Surprised About It. All The Planning Charts And Demolition Orders Have Been On Display At Your Local Planning Department In Alpha Centauri For 50 Of Your Earth Years, So You’ve Had Plenty Of Time To Lodge Any Formal Complaint And It’s Far Too Late To Start Making A Fuss About It Now... What Do You Mean You’ve Never Been To Alpha Centauri? Oh, For Heaven’s Sake, Mankind, It’s Only Four Light Years Away, You Know. I’m Sorry, But If You Can’t Be Bothered To Take An Interest In Local Affairs, That’s Your Own Lookout. Energize The Demolition Beams.

Technology Is A Word That Describes Something That Doesn't Work Yet.

How Do You Feel?" He Asked Him. "like A Military Academy," Said Arthur. "bits Of Me Keep On Passing Out.

Insofar As She Recognized At All That She Was Dreaming, She Realized That She Must Be Exploring Her Subconscious Mind. She Had Heard It Said That Humans Are Supposed Only To Use About A Tenth Of Their Brains, And That No One Was Really Clear What The Other Nine Tenths Were For, But She Had Certainly Never Heard It Suggested That They Were Used For Storing Penguins.

The Idea Was Fantastically, Wildly Improbable. But Like Most Fantastically, Wildly Improbable Ideas It Was At Least As Worthy Of Consideration As A More Mundane One To Which The Facts Had Been Strenuously Bent To Fit.

He Spent A Lot Of Time Flying. He Learnt To Communicate With Birds And Discovered That Their Conversation Was Fantastically Boring. It Was All To Do With Wind Speed, Wing Spans, Power-to-weight Ratios And A Fair Bit About Berries. Unfortunately, He Discovered, Once You Have Learnt Birdspeak You Quickly Come To Realize That The Air Is Full Of It The Whole Time, Just Inane Bird Chatter. There Is No Getting Away From It.

Why Are People Born? Why Do They Die? Why Do They Want To Spend So Much Of The Intervening Time Wearing Digital Watches?

Time Travel, By Its Very Nature, Was Invented In All Periods Of History Simultaneously.

It's Good To Leave Your Room Super-messy When You're Away. Whoever Tries To Break Into Your Room Will Thought It Has Already Been Ransacked.

Science Fiction That's Just About People Wandering Around In Space Ships Shooting Each Other With Ray Guns Is Very Dull. I Like It When It Enables You To Do Fairly Radical Reinterpretations Of Human Experience, Just To Show All The Different Interpretations That Can Be Put On Apparently Fairly Simple And Commonplace Events. That I Find Fun.

From Another Direction He Felt The Sensation Of Being A Sheep Startled By A Flying Saucer, But It Was Virtually Indistinguishable From The Feeling Of Being A Sheep Startled By Anything Else It Ever Encountered, For They Were Creatures Who Learned Very Little On Their Journey Through Life, And Would Be Startled To See The Sun Rising In The Morning, And Astonished By All The Green Stuff In The Fields.

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.

Democracy Is All About Not Electing The Wrong Man-eating Lizard.

Time Is An Illusion. Lunchtime Doubly So.

It Can Hardly Be A Coincidence That No Language On Earth Has Ever Produced The Expression, 'as Pretty As An Airport.

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.

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.

Nobody Got Murdered Before Lunch. But Nobody. People Weren't Up To It. You Needed A Good Lunch To Get Both The Blood-sugar And Blood-lust Levels Up.

We Demand Rigidly Defined Areas Of Doubt And Uncertainty!

The Kakapo Is A Bird Out Of Time. If You Look One In Its Large, Round, Greeny-brown Face, It Has A Look Of Serenely Innocent Incomprehension That Makes You Want To Hug It And Tell It That Everything Will Be All Right, Thought You Know That It Probably Will Not Be.

And Then I Decided I Was A Lemon For A Couple Of Weeks.

You Cannot See What I See Because You See What You See. You Cannot Know What I Know Because You Know What You Know. What I See And What I Know Cannot Be Added To What You See And What You Know Because They Are Not Of The Same Kind. Neither Can It Replace What You See And What You Know, Because That Would Be To Replace You Yourself." "hang On, Can I Write This Down?" Said Arthur, Excitedly Fumbling In His Pocket For A Pencil.

If There's Anything More Important Than My Ego Around, I Want It Caught And Shot Now.

So What Do We Do If We Get Bitten By Something Deadly?' I Asked. He Looked At Me As If I Were Stupid. 'you Die, Of Course. That's What Deadly Means.

Don't Believe Anything You Read On The Net. Except This. Well, Including This, I Suppose.

To Boldly Split Infinitives That No Man Had Split Before.

I Think That Growing Up In A Crowded Continent Like Europe With An Awful Lot Of Competing Claims, Ideas, Cultures, And Systems Of Thought We Have, Perforce, Developed A More Sophisticated Notion Of What The Word Freedom Means Than I See Much Evidence Of In America. To Be Frank, It Sometimes Seems That The American Idea Of Freedom Has More To Do With My Freedom To Do What I Want Than Your Freedom To Do What You Want. I Think That In Europe We're Probably Better At Understanding How To Balance Those Competing Claims, Though Not A Lot.

Really, The Moment You Have Any Idea, The Second Thought That Enters Your Mind After The Original Idea Is, "what Is This? Is It A Book, Is It A Movie, Is It A This, Is It A That, Is It A Short Story, Is It A Breakfast Cereal?" Really, From That Moment, Your Decision About What Kind Of Thing It Is Then Determines How It Develops.

"does God Know He [exists]?" "of Course He Does. Otherwise, You Could Not Have Asked The Question, And I Could Not Have Answered."

I Am Rarely Happier Than When Spending An Entire Day Programming My Computer.

The Impossible Often Has A Kind Of Integrity Which The Merely Improbable Lacks.

Impossible Things

Possible And Impossible

Stomp Stomp. Whirr. Pleased To Be Of Service. Shut Up. Thank You. Stomp Stomp Stomp Stomp Stomp. Whirr. Thank You For Making A Simple Door Very Happy. Hope Your Diodes Rot. Thank You. Have A Nice Day. Stomp Stomp Stomp Stomp. Whirr. It Is My Pleasure To Open For You... Zark Off. ...and My Satisfaction To Close Again With The Knowledge Of A Job Well Done. I Said Zark Off. Thank You For Listening To This Message.

Much To His Annoyance, A Thought Popped Into His Mind. It Was Very Clear And Very Distinct, And He Had Now Come To Recognize These Thoughts For What They Were. His Instinct Was To Resist Them.

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.

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.

The Quality Of Any Advice Anybody Has To Offer Has To Be Judged Against The Quality Of Life They Actually Lead.

There Is A Piece Of Me That Likes To Fondly Imagine My Maverick And Rebellious Nature, But, More Accurately, I Like To Have A Nice And Cosy Institution That I Can Rub Up Against A Little Bit.

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.

Anything That Happens, Happens.

High On A Rocky Promontory Sat An Electric Monk On A Bored Horse.

In The Stillness, A Fly Would Not Have Dared Clear It's Throat.

I Don't Want To Die Now!" He Yelled. "i've Still Got A Headache! I Don't Want To Go To Heaven With A Headache, I'd Be All Cross And Wouldn't Enjoy It!

Nobleness Was One Word For Making A Fuss About The Trivial Inevitabilities Of Life, But There Were Others.

When The Idea Comes, I Often Can't Remember Where It Came From. I Remember Very Little About Writing The First Series Of Hitchhiker's. It's Almost As If Someone Else Wrote It.

Here, For Whatever Reason, Is The World. And Here It Stays. With Me On It.

The Somebody Else's Problem Field Is Much Simpler And More Effective, And What's More Can Be Run For Over A Hundred Years On A Single Torch Battery. This Is Because It Relies On People's Natural Disposition Not To See Anything They Don't Want To, Weren't Expecting, Or Can't Explain.

Anything That Happens, Happens. Anything That, In Happening, Causes Something Else To Happen, Causes Something Else To Happen. Anything That, In Happening, Causes Itself To Happen Again, Happens Again. It Doesn’t Necessarily Do It In Chronological Order, Though.

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.

Only By Counting Could Humans Demonstrate Their Independence Of Computers.

The Available Worlds Looked Pretty Grim. They Had Little To Offer Him Because He Had Little To Offer Them. He Had Been Extremely Chastened To Realize That Although He Originally Came From A World Which Had Cars And Computers And Ballet And Armagnac, He Didn't, By Himself, Know How Any Of It Worked. He Couldn't Do It. Left To His Own Devices He Couldn't Build A Toaster. He Could Just About Make A Sandwich And That Was It.

I Come In Peace...take Me To Your Lizard.

Earthmen Are Not Proud Of Their Ancestors And Never Invite Them Round To Dinner.

I Think Fish Is Nice, But Then I Think That Rain Is Wet, So Who Am I To Judge?

The Film Project Has Been “twenty Years Of Constipation,” And He Likens The Hollywood Process To “trying To Grill A Steak By Having A Succession Of People Coming Into The Room And Breathing On It.”

A Hole Had Just Appeared In The Galaxy. It Was Exactly A Nothingth Of A Second Long, A Nothingth Of An Inch Wide, And Quite A Lot Of Million Light Years From End To End. As It Closed Up [...] Two Hundred And Thirty-nine Thousand Lightly Fried Eggs Fell Out Of It...materializing In A Large Woobly Heap On The Famine-struck Land Of Poghril In The Pansel System. The Whole Poghril Tribe Had Died Out From Famine Except For One Last Man Who Died Of Cholesterol Poisoning Some Weeks Later.

A Beach House Isn't Just Real Estate. It's A State Of Mind.

In Fact, Lig Never Formally Resigned His Editorship—he Merely Left His Office Late One Morning, And Has Never Returned Since. Though Well Over A Century Has Now Passed, Many Members Of The Guide Staff Still Retain The Romantic Notion That He Has Simply Popped Out For A Sandwich And Will Yet Return To Put In A Solid Afternoon's Work. Strictly Speaking, All Editors Since Lig Lury Jr., Have Therefore Been Designated Acting Editors, And Lig's Desk Is Still Preserved The Way He Left It, With The Addition Of A Small Sign That Says Lig Lury, Jr., Editor, Missing, Presumed Fed.

Any Man Who Can Hitch The Length And Breadth Of The Galaxy, Rough It, Slum It, Struggle Against Terrible Odds, Win Through, And Still Know Where His Towel Is Is Clearly A Man To Be Reckoned With.

One Of The Major Problems Encountered In Time Travel Is Not That Of Accidentally Becoming Your Own Father Or Mother. There Is No Problem Involved In Becoming Your Own Father Or Mother That A Broadminded And Well-adjusted Family Can't Cope With.

He Has Personality Problems Beyond The Dreams Of Analysts.

I Only Know As Much About Myself As My Mind Can Work Out Under Its Current Conditions. And Its Current Conditions Are Not Good.

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.

He Had A Tremendous Propensity For Getting Lost When Driving. This Was Largely Because Of His Method Of “zen” 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.

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Jiddu Krishnamurti

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