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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

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It Is A Rare

Douglas Adams

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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.

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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?

It All Sounds Rather Naive And Sentimental To Be Talking About Children Laughing And Dancing And Singing Together When We All Know Perfectly Well That What Children Do In Real Life Is Snarl And Take Drugs.

... The Truth Of The Matter Is, That Most English People Don't Know How To Make Tea Anymore Either, And Most People Drink Cheap Instant Coffee Instead, Which Is A Pity, And Gives Americans The Impression That The English Are Just Generally Clueless About Hot Stimulants.

I Think All Cats Are Wild. They Only Act Tame If There´s A Saucer Of Milk In It For Them.

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.

Ford... You're Turning Into A Penguin. Stop It.

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Hitchhikers Guide

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.

Space Is Unimaginably Big.

In The Beginning The Universe Was Created. This Has Made A Lot Of People Very Angry And Been Widely Regarded As A Bad Move.

I Am Terribly Proud Of-i Was Born In Cambridge In 1952 And My Initials Are Dna!

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.

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.

She Had What It Took: Great Hair, A Profound Understanding Of Strategic Lip Gloss, The Intelligence To Understand The World And A Tiny Secret Interior Deadness Which Meant She Didn’t Care.

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.

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

The Complexities Of Cause And Effect Defy Analysis.

Cause And Effect

Joo Janta 200 Super-chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses Have Been Specially Designed To Help People Develop A Relaxed Attitude To Danger. At The First Hint Of Trouble, They Turn Totally Black And Thus Prevent You From Seeing Anything That Might Alarm You.

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

It {darwin's Theory Of Evolution] Was A Concept Of Such Stunning Simplicity, But It Gave Rise, Naturally, To All Of The Infinite And Baffling Complexity Of Life. The Awe It Inspired In Me Made The Awe That People Talk About In Respect Of Religious Experience Seem, Frankly, Silly Beside It. I'd Take The Awe Of Understanding Over The Awe Of Ignorance Any Day.

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.

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.

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.

Time Is An Illusion. Lunchtime Doubly So.

The Saab Seethed Off Into The Night. Arthur Watched It Go, As Stunned As A Man Might Be Who, Having Believed Himself To Be Totally Blind For Five Years, Suddenly Discovers That He Had Merely Been Wearing Too Large A Hat.

And For All The Richest And Most Successful Merchants Life Inevitably Became Rather Dull And Niggly, And They Began To Imagine That This Was Therefore The Fault Of The Worlds They'd Settled On.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide Has Not Been An Opera. It Has However Been A Tapestry, If You Count A Woven Bath Towel As A Tapestry.

Yes It Is,' Said The Professor. 'wait—' He Motioned To Richard, Who Was About To Go Out Again And Investigate— 'let It Be. It Won't Be Long.' Richard Stared In Disbelief. 'you Say There's A Horse In Your Bathroom, And All You Can Do Is Stand There Naming Beatles Songs?' The Professor Looked Blankly At Him.

It Is Worth Repeating At This Point The Theories That Ford Had Come Up With, On His First Encounter With Human Beings, To Account For Their Peculiar Habit Of Continually Stating And Restating The Very Very Obvious, As In "it's A Nice Day," Or "you're Very Tall," Or "so This Is It, We're Going To Die." His First Theory Was That If Human Beings Didn't Keep Exercising Their Lips, Their Mouths Probably Shriveled Up. After A Few Months Of Observation He Had Come Up With A Second Theory, Which Was This--"if Human Beings Don't Keep Exercising Their Lips, Their Brains Start Working.

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.

You Just Come Along With Me And Have A Good Time. The Galaxy's A Fun Place. You'll Need To Have This Fish In Your Ear.

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.

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.

Anything Invented After You’re Thirty-five Is Against The Natural Order Of Things

For Millions Of Years, On Average, One Species Became Extinct Every Century.... We Are Now Heaving More Than A Thousand Different Species Of Animals And Plants Off The Planet Every Year.

I Like The Cover," He Said. "don't Panic. It's The First Helpful Or Intelligible Thing Anybody's Said To Me All Day.

Your God Person Puts An Apple Tree In The Middle Of A Garden And Says, Do What You Like, Guys, Oh, But Don't Eat The Apple. Surprise Surprise, They Eat It And He Leaps Out From Behind A Bush Shouting "gotcha". It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference If They Hadn't Eaten It.' 'why Not?' 'because If You're Dealing With Somebody Who Has The Sort Of Mentality Which Likes Leaving Hats On The Pavement With Bricks Under Them You Know Perfectly Well They Won't Give Up. They'll Get You In The End.

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

What God Would Be Hanging Around Terminal Two Of Heathrow Airport Trying To Catch The 15:37 Flight To Oslo?

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

He Stood Up Straight And Looked The World Squarely In The Fields And Hills. To Add Weight To His Words He Stuck The Rabbit Bone In His Hair. He Spread His Arm Out Wide. "i Will Go Mad!" He Annouced.

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.

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.

The Guide Is Definitive. Reality Is Frequently Inaccurate.

Simple. I Got Very Bored And Depressed, So I Went And Plugged Myself In To Its External Computer Feed. I Talked To The Computer At Great Length And Explained My View Of The Universe To It," Said Marvin. "and What Happened?" Pressed Ford. "it Committed Suicide," Said Marvin And Stalked Off Back To The Heart Of Gold.

That Was It. That Was Really It. She Knew That She Had Told Herself That That Was It Only Seconds Earlier, But This Was Now The Final Real Ulimate It.

I Was Created To Fulfill A Function And I Failed In It. I Negated My Own Existence.

The Bird That Would Soar Above The Plain Of Tradition And Prejudice Must Have Strong Wings.

Capital Letters Were Always The Best Way Of Dealing With Things You Didn't Have A Good Answer To.

Alltami (n.) The Ancient Art Of Being Able To Balance The Hot And Cold Shower Taps.

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.

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.

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.

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

There's Nothing Worse Than Sitting Down To Write A Novel And Saying, "well, Okay, I'm Going To Do Something Of High Artistic Worth." It's Funny.

I Am Rarely Happier Than When Spending Entire Day Programming My Computer To Perform Automatically A Task That It Would Otherwise Take Me A Good Ten Seconds To Do By Hand.

A Computer Terminal Is Not Some Clunky Old Television With A Typewriter In Front Of It. It Is An Interface Where The Mind And Body Can Connect With The Universe And Move Bits Of It About.

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.

No. No Games. He Wanted Her And Didn't Care Who Knew It. He Definitely And Absolutely Wanted Her, Longed For Her, Wanted To Do More Things Than There Were Names For With Her.

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.

Was There A Reason Behind It? There Would Be No Point In Asking Zaphod, He Never Appeared To Have A Reason For Anything He Did At All: He Had Turned Unfathomability Into An Art Form. He Attacked Everything In Life With A Mixture Of Extraordinary Genius And Naive Incompetence And It Was Often Difficult To Tell Which Was Which.

The Heart Of Gold Fled On Silently Through The Night Of Space, Now On Conventional Photon Drive. Its Crew Of Four Were Ill As Ease Knowing That They Had Been Brought Together Not Of Their Own Volition Or By Simple Coincidence, But By Some Curious Perversion Of Physics- As If Relationships Between People Were Susceptible To The Same Laws That Governed The Relationships Between Atoms And Molecules

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?

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

In An Infinite Universe Anything Can Happen.

Anything Can Happen

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.

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

It Is A Mistake To Think You Can Solve Any Major Problems Just With Potatoes.

It's Reassuring To Realize That Everybody Is As Stupid As You Are And That All We Are Doing When We Are Standing In The Kitchen Wondering What We Came In Here For Is "woking.

My Absolute Favourite 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.

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?

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!

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.

The Ships Hung In The Sky In Much The Same Way That Bricks Don't.

How Do You Know You're Having Fun If There's No One Watching You Have It?

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

For Seven And A Half Million Years, Deep Thought Computed And Calculated, And In The End Announced That The Answer Was In Fact Forty-two - And So Another, Even Bigger, Computer Had To Be Built To Find Out What The Actual Question Was.

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.

Most Of The Time Spent Wrestling With Technologies That Don't Quite Work Yet Is Just Not Worth It For End Users, However Much Fun It Is For Nerds.

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

It Is Difficult To Be Sat On All Day, Every Day, By Some Other Creature, Without Forming An Opinion On Them. On The Other Hand, It Is Perfectly Possible To Sit All Day, Every Day, On Top Of Another Creature And Not Have The Slightest Thought About Them Whatsoever.

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

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.

Very Strange People, Physicists - In My Experience The Ones Who Aren't Dead Are In Some Way Very Ill.

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

'these Things Will Become Clear To You,' Said The Old Man Gently, 'at Least,' He Added With Slight Doubt In His Voice, 'clearer Than They Are At The Moment.'

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 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.

One Nonabsolute Number Is The Given Time Of Arrival, Which Is Now Known To Be One Of The Most Bizarre Of Mathematical Concepts, A Number Whose Existence Can Only Be Defined As Being Anything Other Than Itself. In Other Words, The Given Time Of Arrival Is The One Moment Of Time At Which It Is Impossible That Any Member Of The Party Will Arrive.

Mathematical Equations

Moving From Radio To Television, You Can Take Most Of The Words With You.

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.

Please Call Me Eddie If It Will Help You To Relax.

The Switch Had Two Settings. You Could Either Turn It To Auto, In Which Case The Awning Lowered Itself Whenever The Sun Came Out, Or You Could Set It To Manuel [sic], In Which Case, We Assumed, A Small, Incompetent Spanish Waiter Came And Did It For You.

One Day Old Thrashbarg Said That Almighty Bob Had Declared That He, Thrashbarg, Was To Have First Pick Of The Sandwiches. The Villagers Asked Him When This Had Happened, Exactly, And Thrashbarg Said It Had Happened Yesterday, When They Weren't Looking. 'have Faith,' Old Thrashbarg Said, 'or Burn!' They Let Him Have First Pick Of The Sandwiches. It Seemed Easiest.

I Say What It Occurs To Me To Say When I Think I Hear People Say Things. More I Cannot Say.

'the Difficulty With This Conversation,' Said Arthur After A Sort Of Pondering Look Had Crawled Slowly Across His Face Like A Mountaineer Negotiating A Tricky Outcrop, '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.'

The System Of Life On This Planet Is So Astoundingly Complex That It Was A Long Time Before Man Even Realized That It Was A System At All And That It Wasn't Something That Was Just There.

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.

The Last Time Anybody Made A List Of The Top Hundred Character Attributes Of New Yorkers, Common Sense Snuck In At Number 79.

Reality Is Hopelessly Inaccurate.

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

You Can't Dodge Your Responsibilities By Saying They Don't Exist!

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.

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.

Aberystwyth (n.) A Nostalgic Yearning Which Is In Itself More Pleasant Than The Thing Being Yearned For.

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

It's Part Of The Shape Of The Universe. I Only Have To Talk To Somebody And They Begin To Hate Me.

The Only Person For Whom The House Was In Any Way Special Was Arthur Dent, And That Was Only Because It Happened To Be The One He Lived In.

What Is The Point? We Assume That Every Time We Do Anything We Know What The Consequences Will Be, I.e., More Or Less What We Intend Them To Be. This Is Not Only Not Always Correct. It Is Wildly, Crazily, Stupidly, Cross-eyed-blithering-insectly Wrong!

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.

Arthur Shook His Head And Sat Down. He Looked Up. “i Thought You Must Be Dead …” He Said Simply. “so Did I For A While,” Said Ford, “and Then I Decided I Was A Lemon For A Couple Of Weeks. I Kept Myself Amused All That Time Jumping In And Out Of A Gin And Tonic.

Unfortunately This Electric Monk Had Developed A Fault, And Had Started To Believe All Kinds Of Things, More Or Less At Random. It Was Even Beginning To Believe Things They'd Have Difficulty Believing In Salt Lake City.

Numbers Written On Restaurant Bills Within The Confines Of Restaurants Do Not Follow The Same Mathematical Laws As Numbers Written On Any Other Pieces Of Paper In Any Other Parts Of The Universe. This Single Fact Took The Scientific World By Storm.

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

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.

I Watched The Gorilla's Eyes Again, Wise And Knowing Eyes, And Wondered About This Business Of Trying To Teach Apes Language. Our Language. Why? There Are Many Members Of Our Own Species Who Live In And With The Forest And Know It And Understand It. We Don't Listen To Them. What Is There To Suggest We Would Listen To Anything An Ape Could Tell Us? Or That It Would Be Able To Tell Us Of Its Life In A Language That Hasn't Been Born Of That Life? I Thought, Maybe It Is Not That They Have Yet To Gain A Language, It Is That We Have Lost One.

I Don't Really Have Any Advice, Other Than To Say It's The Most Appallingly Difficult Thing I've Ever Tried To Do And I Wish I Had A Better Idea Of How To Do It. In My Experience What You End Up With Is The By-product Of Your Failure To Achieve What You Set Out To Do. It May Turn Out Ok, But It Wasn't What You Meant And You've No Idea How You Got There.

We’ll Meet The Meat.

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

Time Affords Us The Ability To Blame Past Errors On Others While Whole Heartedly Pronouncing Our Futures Successes.

Even Light, Which Travels So Fast It Takes Most Races Thousands Of Years To Realize That It Travels At All, Takes Time To Journey Between The Stars.

You Can't Possibly Be A Scientist If You Mind People Thinking That You're A Fool.

He Was Constantly Reminded Of How Startlingly Different A Place The World Was When Viewed From A Point Only Three Feet To The Left.

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.

Bypasses Are Devices That Allow Some People To Dash From Point A To Point B Very Fast While Other People Dash From Point B To Point A Very Fast.

Finding Your Path

...and The Universe, ... Will Explode Later For Your Pleasure.

I Have Terrible Periods Of Lack Of Confidence. I Just Don't Believe I Can Do It And No Evidence To The Contrary Will Sway Me From That View.

The Dew Has Fallen With A Particularly Sickening Thud This Morning.

There Are Two Things In Particular That It [the Computer Industry] Failed To Foresee: One Was The Coming Of The Internet(...); The Other Was The Fact That The Century Would End.

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.'

We Demand Rigidly Defined Areas Of Doubt And Uncertainty!

We Are Stuck With Technology When All We Really Want Is Just Stuff That Works. How Do You Recognize Something That Is Still Technology? A Good Clue Is If It Comes With A Manual.

Don't Blame You," Said Marvin And Counted Five Hundred And Ninety-seven Thousand Million Sheep Before Falling Asleep Again A Second Later.

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.

I Am Fascinated By Religion. (that's A Completely Different Thing From Believing In It!) It Has Had Such An Incalculably Huge Effect On Human Affairs. What Is It? What Does It Represent? Why Have We Invented It? How Does It Keep Going? What Will Become Of It? I Love To Keep Poking And Prodding At It. I've Thought About It So Much Over The Years That That Fascination Is Bound To Spill Over Into My Writing.

I Teleported Home Last Night With Ron And Sid And Meg Ron Stole Meggy's Heart Away And I Got Sidney's Leg.

When People You Greatly Admire Appear To Be Thinking Deep Thoughts, They Probably Are Thinking About Lunch.

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

If You Took A Couple Of David Bowies And Stuck One Of The David Bowies On The Top Of The Other David Bowie, Then Attached Another David Bowie To The End Of Each Of The Arms Of The Upper Of The First Two David Bowies And Wrapped The Whole Business Up In A Dirty Beach Robe You Would Then Have Something Which Didn't Exactly Look Like John Watson, But Which Those Who Knew Him Would Find Hauntingly Familiar.

In Moments Of Great Stress, Every Life Form That Exists Gives Out A Tiny Subliminal Signal.

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.

Douglas Adams Did Not Enjoy Writing, And He Enjoyed It Less As Time Went On. He Was A Bestselling, Acclaimed, And Much-loved Novelist Who Had Not Set Out To Be A Novelist, And Who Took Little Joy In The Process Of Crafting Novels. He Loved Talking To Audiences. He Liked Writing Screenplays. He Liked Being At The Cutting Edge Of Technology And Inventing

And So The Universe Ended.

Time Doesn't Necessarily Happen In Chronological Order.

Why Should I Want To Make Anything Up? Life's Bad Enough As It Is Without Wanting To Invent Any More Of It.

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.

Looking Up Into The Night Sky Is Looking Into Infinity — Distance Is Incomprehensible And Therefore Meaningless

Earth: Mostly Harmless

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.

People Who Need To Bully You Are The Easiest To Push Around.

Rather Than Arriving Five Hours Late And Flustered, It Would Be Better All Around If He Were To Arrive Five Hours And A Few Extra Minutes Late, But Triumphantly In Command.

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

Religion ... Has Certain Ideas At The Heart Of It Which We Call Sacred Or Holy Or Whatever. What It Means Is, 'here Is An Idea Or A Notion That You're Not Allowed To Say Anything Bad About; You're Just Not. Why Not? Because You're Just Not. If Someone Votes For A Party That You Don't Agree With, You're Free To Argue About It As Much As You Like; Everybody Will Have An Argument But Nobody Feels Aggrieved By It. ... But On The Other Hand, If Somebody Says 'i Mustn't Move A Light Switch On A Saturday', You Say 'i Respect That'.

"i Refuse To Prove That I Exist" Says God, "for Proof Denies Faith, And Without Faith, I Am Nothing." "oh," Says Man, "but The Babel Fish Is A Dead Give-away, Isn't It? It Proves You Exist, And So Therefore You Don't. Q.e.d." "oh, I Hadn't Thought Of That," Says God, Who Promptly Vanishes In A Puff Of Logic.

Words Used Carelessly, As If They Did Not Matter In Any Serious Way, Often Allowed Otherwise Well-guarded Truths To Seep Through.

The Electric Monk Was A Labour-saving Device, Like A Dishwasher Or A Video Recorder... Electric Monks Believed Things For You, Thus Saving You What Was Becoming An Increasingly Onerous Task, That Of Believing All The Things The World Expected You To Believe.

...they Discovered Only A Small Asteroid Inhabited By A Solitary Old Man Who Claimed Repeatedly That Nothing Was True, Though He Was Later Discovered To Be Lying.

Only By Counting Could Humans Demonstrate Their Independence Of Computers.

Do You Find Coming To Terms With The Mindless Tedium Of It All Presents An Interesting Challenge?

The More I Think About Our Species The More I Think We Just Do Stuff And Make Up Explanations Later When Asked. But It's Not True That I Would Rather Write Than Read. I Would Rather Read Than Write. To Be Honest I Would Rather Hang Upside Down In A Bucket Than Write.

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

Impossible Things

Possible And Impossible

The Great Thing About Being The Only Species That Makes A Distinction Between Right And Wrong Is That We Can Make Up The Rules For Ourselves As We Go Along.

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.

Exactly!" Said Deep Thought. "so Once You Do Know What The Question Actually Is, You'll Know What The Answer Means.

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

It Can Be Very Dangerous To See Things From Somebody Else's Point Of View Without The Proper Training.

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.

We're Not Obsessed By Anything, You See," Insisted Ford. "..." "and That's The Deciding Factor. We Can't Win Against Obsession. They Care, We Don't. They Win." "i Care About Lots Of Things," Said Slartibartfast, His Voice Trembling Partly With Annoyance, But Partly Also With Uncertainty. "such As?" "well," Said The Old Man, "life, The Universe. Everything, Really. Fjords." "would You Die For Them?" "fjords?" Blinked Slartibartfast In Surprise. "no." "well Then." "wouldn't See The Point, To Be Honest.

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.

You Turn The Computer Into The Storyteller And The Player Into The Audience, Like In The Old Days When The Storyteller Would Actually Respond To The Audience, Rather Than Just Having The Audience Respond To The Storyteller. I Had An Enormous Amount Of Fun, Actually, Working On That.

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

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.

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

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.

A Mobile Phone Needs A Manual In The Way That A Teacup Doesn't

The Longest And Most Destructive Party Ever Held Is Now Into Its Fourth Generation And Still No One Shows Any Signs Of Leaving. Somebody Did Once Look At His Watch, But That Was Eleven Years Ago Now, And There Has Been No Follow Up.

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.

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.

A Nerd Is Someone Who Uses A Telephone To Talk To Other People About Telephones.

We Have Normality. I Repeat, We Have Normality. Anything You Still Can't Cope With Is Therefore Your Own Problem.

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

It Takes An Awful Lot Of Time To Not Write A Book.

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.

People Always Make This Totally Artificial Distinction Between What Is Commercial And What Is Good. They Quote That Maxim "nobody Ever Lost Money Underestimating The Public's Taste" And I Think That's Very Wrongheaded. I Like To Believe The Audience Is Actually Intelligent, Because It's Made Up Of Other People Like Yourself.

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?

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."

We Notice Things That Don't Work. We Don't Notice Things That Do. We Notice Computers, We Don't Notice Pennies. We Notice E-book Readers, We Don't Notice Books.

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

He Almost Danced To The Fridge, Found The Three Least Hairy Things In It, Put Them On A Plate And Watched Them Intently For Two Minutes. Since They Made No Attempt To Move Within That Time He Called Them Breakfast And Ate Them. Between Them They Killed A Virulent Space Disease He'd Picked Up Without Knowing It In The Flargathon Gas Swamps A Few Days Earlier, Which Otherwise Would Have Killed Off Half The Population Of The Western Hemisphere, Blinded The Other Half, And Driven Everyone Else Psychotic And Sterile, So The Earth Was Lucky There.

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.

Pardon Me For Breathing, Which I Never Do Any Way So I Don’t Know Why I Bother To Say It, Oh God, I’m So Depressed.

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

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.

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.

[the Head Of Radio Three] Had Been Ensnared By The Music Director Of The College And A Professor Of Philosophy. These Two Were Busy Explaining To The Harassed Man That The Phrase "too Much Mozart" Was, Given Any Reasonable Definition Of Those Three Words, An Inherently Self-contradictory Expression, And That Any Sentence Which Contained Such A Phrase Would Be Thereby Rendered Meaningless And Could Not, Consequently, Be Advanced As Part Of An Argument In Favour Of Any Given Programme-scheduling Strategy.

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

Arthur Felt Happy. He Was Terribly Pleased That The Day Was For Once Working Out So Much According To Plan. Only Twenty Minutes Ago He Had Decided He Would Go Mad, And Now Here He Was Already Chasing A Chesterfield Sofa Across The Fields Of Prehistoric Earth.

Woking (vb.) To Enter The Kitchen With The Precise Determination To Perform Something Only To Forget What It Is Just Before You Do It.

I'd Take The Awe Of Understanding Over The Awe Of Ignorance Any Day.

He Felt A Spasm Of Excitement Because He Knew Instinctively Who It Was, Or At Least Knew Who It Was He Wanted It To Be, And Once You Know What It Is You Want To Be True, Instinct Is A Very Useful Device For Enabling You To Know That It Is.

I'm 48, Which Is A Bit Of A Shock To Me. Why Only Last Year I Thought I Was A Precocious Young Thing!

I Find The Whole Business Of Religion Profoundly Interesting. But It Does Mystify Me That Otherwise Intelligent People Take It Seriously.

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