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It Is A Well-known Fact That Those People Who Must Want To Rule People Are, Ipso Facto, Those Least Suited To Do It... Anyone Who Is Capable Of Getting Themselves Made President Should On No Account Be Allowed To Do The Job.

-Douglas Adams

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It Is A Well-known

Douglas Adams

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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.

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In The End, It Was The Sunday Afternoons He Couldn't Cope With, And That Terrible Listlessness That Starts To Set In About 2:55, When You Know You've Taken All The Baths That You Can Usefully Take That Day, That However Hard You Stare At Any Given Paragraph In The Newspaper You Will Never Actually Read It, Or Use The Revolutionary New Pruning Technique It Describes, And That As You Stare At The Clock The Hands Will Move Relentlessly On To Four O'clock, And You Will Enter The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul.

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

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

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

Anyone Who Is Capable Of Getting Themselves Made President Should On No Account Be Allowed To Do The Job.

But The Reason I Call Myself By My Childhood Name Is To Remind Myself That A Scientist Must Also Be Absolutely Like A Child. If He Sees A Thing, He Must Say That He Sees It, Whether It Was What He Thought He Was Going To See Or Not. See First, Think Later, Then Test. But Always See First. Otherwise You Will Only See What You Were Expecting.

The Only Moral It Is Possible To Draw From This Story Is That One Should Never Throw The Q Letter Into A Privet Bush, But Unfortunately There Are Times When It Is Unavoidable.

Time Is The Worst Place, So To Speak, To Get Lost In, As Arthur Dent Could Testify, Having Been Lost In Both Time And Space A Good Deal. At Least Being Lost In Space Kept You Busy.

A Life That Is Burdened With Expectations Is A Heavy Life. Its Fruit Is Sorrow And Disappointment.

Bistromathics Itself Is Simply A Revolutionary New Way Of Understanding The Behavior Of Numbers. Just As Einstein Observed That Space Was Not An Absolute But Depended On The Observer's Movement In Space, And That Time Was Not An Absolute, But Depended On The Observer's Movement In Time, So It Is Now Realized That Numbers Are Not Absolute, But Depend On The Observer's Movement In Restaurants.

There Is A Feeling Which Persists In England That Making A Sandwich Interesting, Attractive, Or In Any Way Pleasant To Eat Is Something Sinful That Only Foreigners Do.

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

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.

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.

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.

A Theory Of The Universe That States: If Anyone Finds Out What The Universe Is For, It Will Disappear And Be Replaced By Something More Bizarrely Inexplicable.

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.

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

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.

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

Could Be. I’m A Pretty Dangerous Dude When I’m Cornered.” “yeah,” Said The Voice From Under The Table, “you Go To Pieces So Fast People Get Hit By The Shrapnel.

Conceited Little Mega-puppy.

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

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Hitchhikers Guide

There Was One Planet Off In The Seventh Dimension That Got Used As A Ball In A Game Of Intergalactic Bar Billiards. Got Potted Straight Into A Black Hole.

The Difference Between Us And A Computer Is That, The Computer Is Blindingly Stupid, But It Is Capable Of Being Stupid Many, Many Million Times A Second.

And All Dared To Brave Unknown Terrors, To Do Mighty Deeds, To Boldly Split Infinitives That No Man Had Split Before--and Thus Was The Empire Forged.

Ha, But My Life Is A Box Of Wormgears.

[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.

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.

Very Deep. You Should Send That In To The Reader's Digest. They've Got A Page For People Like You.

He Turned Slowly Like A Fridge Door Opening.

Imagine A Puddle Waking Up One Morning And Thinking, " This Is An Interesting World I Find Myself In, An Interesting Hole I Find Myself In; Fits Me Rather Neatly, Doesn't It? In Fact It Fits Me Staggeringly Well! It Must Have Been Made To Have Me In It!

The Story Goes That I First Had The Idea For The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy While Lying Drunk In A Field In Innsbruck.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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.”

The Presidents Job, Is Not To Wield Power Himself, But To Lead Attention Away From It.

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.

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.

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

Lord, Lord, Lord. Protect Me From The Consequences Of The Above Prayer.

What Do You Get If You Multiply Six By Nine?" "six By Nine. Forty Two." "that's It. That's All There Is." "i Always Thought Something Was Fundamentally Wrong With The Universe

In Fact There Was Only One Species On The Planet More Intelligent Than Dolphins, And They Spent A Lot Of Their Time In Behavioural Research Laboratories Running Around Inside Wheels And Conduction Frighteningly Elegant And Subtle Experiments On Man. The Fact That Once Again Man Completely Misinterpreted This Relationship Was Entirely According To These Creatures’ Plans.

Deep In The Fundamental Heart Of Mind And Universe There Is A Reason.

You Live And Learn. At Any Rate, You Live.

Reality Is Hopelessly Inaccurate.

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 Didn't Notice I Was Being Set Upon By A Pickpocket, Which I Am Glad Of, Because I Like To Work Only With Professionals.

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.

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.

He Sniggered. He Didn't Like To Think Of Himself As The Sort Of Person Who Giggled Or Sniggered, But He Had To Admit That He Had Been Giggling And Sniggering Almost Continuously For Well Over Half An Hour Now.

We Are Now Cruising At A Level Of Two To The Power Of Twenty-five Thousand To One Against And Falling, And We Will Be Restoring Normality Just As Soon As We Are Sure What Is Normal Anyway.

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.

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

We’ll Meet The Meat.

Lovers Of Print Are Simply Confusing The Plate For The Food.

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.

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

Arthur Blinked At The Screens And Felt He Was Missing Something Important. Suddenly He Realized What It Was. "is There Any Tea On This Spaceship?" He Asked.

He Didn't Know Why He Had Become President Of The Galaxy, Except That It Seemed A Fun Thing To Be.

Put Away Your Worries, The World Is A Good And Perfect Place. It Is In Fact Very Easy.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Ghastly," Continued Marvin, "it All Is. Absolutely Ghastly. Just Don't Even Talk About It. Look At This Door," He Said, Stepping Through It. The Irony Circuits Cut In To His Voice Modulator As He Mimicked The Style Of The Sales Brochure. " 'all The Doors In His Spaceship Have A Cheerful And Sunny Disposition. It Is Their Pleasure To Open For You, And Their Satisfaction To Close Again With The Knowledge Of A Job Well Done.' " As The Door Closed Behind Them It Became Apparent That It Did Indeed Have A Satisfied Sighlike Quality To It. "hummmmmmmyummmmmmmah!" It Said.

Radio Did Not Kill Books And Television Did Not Kill Radio Or Movies - What Television Did Kill Was Cinema Newsreel. Tv Does It Much Better Because It Can Deliver It Instantly. Who Wants Last Week's News?

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.

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.

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

The Future Of Computer Power Is Pure Simplicity.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Just Believe Everything I Tell You, And It Will All Be Very, Very Simple.' Ah, Well, I'm Not Sure I Believe That.

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 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.

If There Was One Thing Life Had Taught Her It Was That There Are Times When You Do Not Go Back For Your Bag And Times When You Do. It Had Yet To Teach Her To Distinguish Between The Two Types Of Occasion.

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.

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.

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

Please Relax," Said The Voice Pleasantly, Like A Stewardess In An Airliner With Only One Wing And Two Engines One Of Which Is On Fire, "you Are Perfectly Safe.

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?

He Would Have Felt Safe If Alongside The Dentrassis' Underwear, The Piles Of Sqornshellous Mattresses And The Man From Betelgeuse Holding Up A Small Yellow Fish And Offering To Put It In His Ear He Had Been Able To See Just A Small Packet Of Cornflakes. But He Couldn't, And He Didn't Feel Safe.

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

The Guide Is Definitive. Reality Is Frequently Inaccurate.

They Wouldn’t Even Lift A Finger To Save Their Own Grandmothers From The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast Of Traal Without Orders Signed In Triplicate, Sent In, Sent Back, Queried, Lost, Found, Subjected To Public Inquiry, Lost Again, And Finally Buried In Soft Peat For Three Months And Recycled As Firelighters.

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.

Zaphod Felt He Was Teetering On The Edge Of Madness And Wondered If He Shouldn't Just Jump Over And Have Done With It.

I Really Didn't Foresee The Internet. But Then, Neither Did The Computer Industry. Not That That Tells Us Very Much Of Course--the Computer Industry Didn't Even Foresee That The Century Was Going To End.

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.

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

What Is This? Some Sort Of Galactic Hyperhearse?

Zaphod Beeblebrox

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.

If You Really Want To Understand Something, The Best Way Is To Try And Explain It To Someone Else.

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.

Sherlock Holmes Observed That Once You Have Eliminated The Impossible Then Whatever Remains, However Improbable, Must Be The Answer. I, However, Do Not Like To Eliminate The Impossible.

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.

Space Is Unimaginably Big.

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.

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

The World Is A Thing Of Utter Inordinate Complexity And Richness And Strangeness That Is Absolutely Awesome.

Perhaps I'm Old And Tired, But I Always Think That The Chances Of Finding Out What Really Is Going On Are So Absurdly Remote That The Only Thing To Do Is To Say Hang The Sense Of It And Just Keep Yourself Occupied.

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.

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.

But What About The End Of The Universe? We'll Miss The Big Moment." I've Seen It. It's Rubbish," Said Zaphod,"nothing But A Gnab Gib." A What?" Opposite Of A Big Bang. Come On, Let's Get Zappy.

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

Nothing Travels Faster Than The Speed Of Light, With The Possible Exception Of Bad News, Which Obeys Its Own Special Laws.

If Life Is Going To Exist In A Universe Of This Size, Then The One Thing It Cannot Afford To Have Is A Sense Of Proportion.

Thought Provoking

Earth: Mostly Harmless

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.

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

You Come To Me For Advice, But You Can't Cope With Anything You Don't Recognize. Hmmm. So We'll Have To Tell You Something You Already Know But Make It Sound Like News, Eh Well, Business As Usual , I Suppose.

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

Who Is This God Person Anyway?

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Hitchhikers Guide

He Felt That His Whole Life Was Some Kind Of Dream And He Sometimes Wondered Whose It Was And Whether They Were Enjoying It.

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

After A While He Played With The Pencil And The Paper Again And Was Delighted When He Discovered How To Make A Mark With The One On The Other. Various Noises Continued Outside, But He Didn't Know Whether They Were Real Or Not. He Then Talked To His Table For A Week To See How It Would React.

Shee, You Guys Are So Unhip It's A Wonder Your Bums Don't Fall Off.

The Idea That Bill Gates (one Of The Founders Of Microsoft) 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...

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.

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

Ballycumber (ba-li-kum-ber) N. One Of The Six Half-read Books Lying Somewhere In Your Bed.

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.

They Live In Perpetual Fear Of The Time They Call "the Coming Of The Great White Handkerchief

But The Plans Were On Display…” “on Display? I Eventually Had To Go Down To The Cellar To Find Them.” “that’s The Display Department.” “with A Flashlight.” “ah, Well, The Lights Had Probably Gone.” “so Had The Stairs.” “but Look, You Found The Notice, Didn’t You?” “yes,” Said Arthur, “yes I Did. It Was On Display In The Bottom Of A Locked Filing Cabinet Stuck In A Disused Lavatory With A Sign On The Door Saying ‘beware Of The Leopard.

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.

It's Guff. It Doesn't Advance The Action. It Makes For Nice Fat Books Such As The American Market Thrives On, But It Doesn't Actually Get You Anywhere.

42 Is A Nice Number That You Can Take Home And Introduce To Your Family.

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

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.

So You Can Imagine What Happens When A Mainland Species Gets Introduced To An Island. It Would Be Like Introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan And Rupert Murdoch Into The Isle Of Wight - The Locals Wouldn't Stand A Chance.

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.

And Wow! Hey! What's This Thing Coming Towards Me Very Fast? Very Very Fast. So Big And Flat And Round, It Needs A Big Wide Sounding Word Like... Ow... Ound... Round... Ground! That's It! That's A Good Name - Ground! I Wonder If It Will Be Friends With Me?

Space Is Big. You Just Won't Believe How Vastly, Hugely, Mind-bogglingly Big It Is.

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.

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

We Live In Strange Times. We Also Live In Strange Places: Each In A Universe Of Our Own. The People With Whom We Populate Our Universes Are The Shadows Of Whole Other Universes Intersecting With Our Own. Being Able To Glance Out Into This Bewildering Complexity Of Infinite Recursion And Say Things Like, 'oh, Hi, Ed! Nice Tan. How's Carol?' Involves A Great Deal Of Filtering Skill For Which All Conscious Entities Have Eventually To Develop A Capacity In Order To Protect Themselves From The Contemplation Of The Chaos Through Which They Seethe And Tumble.

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

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.

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

What Was The Self-sacrifice?" I Jettisoned Half Of A Much-loved And I Think Irreplaceable Pair Of Shoes." Why Was That Self-sacrifice?" Because They Were Mine!" Said Ford, Crossly. I Think We Have Different Value Systems." Well Mine's Better.

Ahenny (adj.) - The Way People Stand When Examining Other People's Bookshelves.

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.

Now The World Has Gone To Bed, Darkness Won't Engulf My Head, I Can See By Infrared, How I Hate The Night. Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, Try To Count Electric Sheep, Sweet Dream Wishes You Can Keep, How I Hate The Night. -marvin

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.

To Trin Tragula's Horror, The Shock Completely Annihilated Her Brain; But To His Satisfaction He Realized That He Had Proved Conclusively That If Life Is Going To Exist In A Universe Of This Size, Then The One Thing It Cannot Afford To Have Is A Sense Of Proportion.

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

In Order To Fly, All One Must Do Is Simply Miss The Ground.

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.

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

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

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

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

If They Don’t Keep Exercising Their Lips, He Thought, Their Brains Start Working.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

He Inched His Way Up The Corridor As If He Would Rather Be Yarding His Way Down It, Which Was True.

How Many Roads Must A Man Walk Down?

Ultimate Questions

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

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

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

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.

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.

One Of The Problems Of Taking Things Apart And Seeing How They Work - Supposing You're Trying To Find Out How A Cat Works--you Take That Cat Apart To See How It Works, What You've Got In Your Hands Is A Non-working Cat. The Cat Wasn't A Sort Of Clunky Mechanism That Was Susceptible To Our Available Tools Of Analysis.

One Of The Problems, And It's One Which Is Obviously Going To Get Worse, Is That All The People At The Party Are Either The Children Or The Grandchildren Or The Great-grandchildren Of The People Who Wouldn't Leave In The First Place, And Because Of All The Business About Selective Breeding And Regressive Genes And So On, It Means That All The People Now At The Party Are Either Absolutely Fanatical Partygoers, Or Gibbering Idiots, Or, More And More Frequently, Both.

I Find That Writing Is A Constant Battle With Exactly The Same Problems You've Always Had.

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.

Being Offended By Things Is The World's Big Hobby At The Moment. It's Almost Taken Over From Wearing Goatee Beards.

Having Not Said Anything The First Time, It Was Somehow Even More Difficult To Broach The Subject The Second Time Around.

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.

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

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

He Felt Like An Old Sponge Steeped In Paraffin And Left In The Sun To Dry.

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.

The Light Was Only Just Visible - Except Of Course That There Was No One To See, No Witnesses, Not This Time, But It Was Nevertheless A Light.

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!

These Creatures You Call Mice, You See, They Are Not Quite As They Appear. They Are Merely The Protrusion Into Our Dimension Of Vastly Hyperintelligent Pandimensional Beings.

The Air Was Stifling, But He Liked It Because It Was Stifling City Air, Full Of Excitingly Unpleasant Smells, Dangerous Music, And The Distant Sound Of Warring Police Tribes.

...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.

I Don't Believe It. Prove It To Me And I Still Won't Believe It.

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.

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.

Zaphod Did Not Want To Tangle With Them And, Deciding That Just As Discretion Is The Better Part Of Valor, So Was Cowardice Is The Better Part Of Discretion, He Valiantly Hid Himself In A Closet.

Protect Me From Knowing What I Don't Need To Know. Protect Me From Even Knowing That There Are Things To Know That I Don't Know. Protect Me From Knowing That I Decided Not To Know About The Things That I Decided Not To Know About. Amen. [...] Lord, Lord, Lord. Protect Me From The Consequences Of The Above Prayer.

The Lights Went Out In His Eyes For Absolutely The Very Last Time Ever.

And Then, One Thursday, Nearly Two Thousand Years After One Man Had Been Nailed To A Tree For Saying How Great It Would Be To Be Nice To People For A Change, A Girl Sitting On Her Own In A Small Café In Rickmansworth Suddenly Realized What It Was That Had Been Going Wrong All This Time, And She Finally Knew How The World Could Be Made A Good And Happy Place. This Time It Was Right, It Would Work, And No One Would Have To Get Nailed To Anything.

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