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[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.

-Douglas Adams

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[the Head Of Radio

Douglas Adams

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[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.

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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.

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

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

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

The Bowler Approached The Wicket At A Lope, A Trot, And Then A Run. He Suddenly Exploded In A Flurry Of Arms And Legs, Out Of Which Flew A Ball.

Aboyne (vb.) To Beat An Expert At A Game Of Skill By Playing So Appallingly That None Of His Clever Tactics Or Strategies Are Of Any Use To Him.

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

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.

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

Ford Looked At Him Severely. And No Sneaky Knocking Down Mr Dent's House Whilst He's Away, Alright?" He Said. The Mere Thought," Growled Mr Prosser, "hadn't Even Begun To Speculate," He Continued, Settling Himself Back, "about The Merest Possibility Of Crossing My Mind.

Mr L Prosser Was, As They Say, Only Human. In Other Words He Was A Carbon-based Life Form Descended From An Ape. More Specifically He Was Forty, Fat And Shabby And Worked For The Local Council. Curiously Enough, Though He Didn't Know It, He Was Also A Direct Male-line Descendant Of Genghis Khan, Though Intervening Generations And Racial Mixing Had So Juggled His Genes That He Had No Discernible Mongoloid Characteristics, And The Only Vestiges Left In Mr L Prosser Of His Mighty Ancestry Were A Pronounced Stoutness About The Tum And A Predilection For Little Fur Hats.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This Man Is The Bee's Knees, Arthur, He Is The Wasp's Nipples. He Is, I Would Go So Far As To Say, The Entire Set Of Erogenous Zones Of Every Major Flying Insect Of The Western World.

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.

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...

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!

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.

Fifteen Years Was A Long Time To Be Stranded Anywhere, Particularly Somewhere As Mind-boggingly Dull As Earth.

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.

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.

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?

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

He Had Extracted Himself From The Cambridge One-way System By The Usual Method, Which Involved Going Round And Round It Faster And Faster Until He Achieved A Sort Of Escape Velocity And Flew Off At A Tangent In A Random Direction, Which He Was Now Trying To Identify And Correct For.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

And So The Universe Ended.

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

The Argument Goes Something Like This: "i Refuse To Prove That I Exist," Says God, "for Proof Denies Faith, And Without Faith I Am Nothing.

Space Is Unimaginably Big.

I Have Detected Disturbances In The Wash.' 'the Wash?' 'the Space-time Wash.' 'are We Talking About Some Sort Of Vogon Laundromat, Or What Are We Talking About?' 'eddies In The Space-time Continuum.' 'ah...is He. Is He.' 'what?' 'er, Who Is Eddy, Then, Exactly?

"what's Up?" "i Don't Know," Said Marvin, "i've Never Been There."

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

He Hoped And Prayed That There Wasn't An Afterlife. Then He Realized There Was A Contradiction Involved Here And Merely Hoped That There Wasn't An Afterlife.

The Impossible Often Has A Kind Of Integrity To It Which The Merely Improbable Lacks. How Often Have You Been Presented With An Apparently Rational Explanation Of Something That Works In All Respects Other Than One, Which Is Just That It Is Hopelessly Improbable? Your Instinct Is To Say, 'yes, But He Or She Simply Wouldn't Do That.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

All You Really Need To Know For The Moment Is That The Universe Is A Lot More Complicated Than You Might Think, Even If You Start From A Position Of Thinking It's Pretty Damn Complicated In The First Place.

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?

A Learning Experience Is One Of Those Things That Says, 'you Know That Thing You Just Did? Don't Do That.

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

Reality Is Hopelessly Inaccurate.

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

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.

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

I Am A Private Detective. I Am Paid To Be Inquisitive And Presumptuous.

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

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

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

Their Minds Sang With The Ecstatic Knowledge That Either What They Were Doing Was Completely And Utterly And Totally Impossible Or That Physics Had A Lot Of Catching Up To Do.

To Boldly Split Infinitives That No Man Had Split Before.

The History Of Every Major Galactic Civilization Tends To Pass Through Three Distinct And Recognizable Phases, Those Of Survival, Inquiry And Sophistication, Otherwise Known As The How, Why, And Where Phases. For Instance, The First Phase Is Characterized By The Question 'how Can We Eat?' The Second By The Question 'why Do We Eat?' And The Third By The Question 'where Shall We Have Lunch?

Will You Stop Counting!' Snarled Zaphod. 'yes,' Said Ford Prefect, 'in Three Minutes And Thirty-five Seconds.

It Is Known That There Are An Infinite Number Of Worlds, Simply Because There Is An Infinite Amount Of Space For Them To Be In. However, Not Every One Of Them Is Inhabited. Therefore, There Must Be A Finite Number Of Inhabited Worlds. Any Finite Number Divided By Infinity Is As Near To Nothing As Makes No Odds, So The Average Population Of All The Planets In The Universe Can Be Said To Be Zero. From This It Follows That The Population Of The Whole Universe Is Also Zero, And That Any People You May Meet From Time To Time Are Merely The Products Of A Deranged Imagination.

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

The Only Thing Nicer Than A Phone That Didn't Ring All The Time (or Indeed At All) Was Six Phones That Didn't Ring All The Time (or Indeed At All).

If God Allows Proof That He Exists He Robs People Of Faith And Without Faith What Is God? Nothing.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I Think A Nerd Is A Person Who Uses The Telephone To Talk To Other People About Telephones. And A Computer Nerd Therefore Is Somebody Who Uses A Computer In Order To Use A Computer.

If You Try And Take A Cat Apart To See How It Works, The First Thing You Have On Your Hands Is A Nonworking Cat.

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.

Time, We Know, Is Relative. You Can Travel Light Years Through The Stars And Back, And If You Do It At The Speed Of Light Then, When You Return, You May Have Aged Mere Seconds While Your Twin Brother Or Sister Will Have Aged Twenty, Thirty, Forty Or However Many Years It Is, Depending On How Far You Traveled. This Will Come To You As A Profound Shock, Particularly If You Didn't Know You Had A Twin Brother Or Sister.

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.

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.

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.

Ha, But My Life Is A Box Of Wormgears.

'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.'

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

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 Universe Are The Shadows Of Whole Other Universes Intersecting With Our Own.

The Universe, As Has Been Observed Before, Is An Unsettlingly Big Place, A Fact Which For The Sake Of A Quiet Life Most People Tend To Ignore.

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

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.

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

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.

I Love Deadlines. I Like The Whooshing Noise They Make As They Go By.

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

I Think You Ought To Know I'm Feeling Very Depressed.

Siamese Cats Have A Way Of Staring At You. Those Who Have Walked In On The Queen Cleaning Her Teeth Will Know The Expression.

Anything That Happens, Happens.

'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.'

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

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.

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.

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.

I Always Thought Something Was Fundamentally Wrong With The Universe

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.

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 Moment At Which Two People, Approaching From Opposite Ends Of A Long Passageway, Recognize Each Other And Immediately Pretend They Haven T. This Is To Avoid The Ghastly Embarrassment Of Having To Continue Recognizing Each Other The Whole Length Of The Corridor.

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.

This Planet Has - Or Rather Had - A Problem, Which Was This: Most Of The People Living On It Were Unhappy For Pretty Much Of The Time. Many Solutions Were Suggested For This Problem, But Most Of These Were Largely Concerned With The Movement Of Small Green Pieces Of Paper, Which Was Odd Because On The Whole It Wasn't The Small Green Pieces Of Paper That Were Unhappy.

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.

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.

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

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

We’ll Meet The Meat.

The Fact Is, I Don't Know Where My Ideas Come From. Nor Does Any Writer. The Only Real Answer Is To Drink Way Too Much Coffee And Buy Yourself A Desk That Doesn't Collapse When You Beat Your Head Against It.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Well, I Mean, Yes Idealism, Yes The Dignity Of Pure Research, Yes The Pursuit Of Truth In All Its Forms, But There Comes A Point I'm Afraid Where You Begin To Suspect That The Entire Multidimensional Infinity Of The Universe Is Almost Certainly Being Run By A Bunch Of Maniacs. And If It Comes To A Choice Between Spending Yet Another Ten Million Years Finding That Out, And On The Other Hand Just Taking The Money And Running, Then I For One Could Do With The Exercise.

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!

Dennis Hutch Had Stepped Up Into The Top Seat When Its Founder Had Died Of A Lethal Overdose Of Brick Wall, Taken While Under The Influence Of A Ferrari And A Bottle Of Tequila.

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.

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.

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

Cigarette Smoke

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.

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

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

He Has Personality Problems Beyond The Dreams Of Analysts.

Being Literate As A Writer Is Good Craft, Is Knowing Your Job, Is Knowing How To Use Your Tools Properly And Not To Damage The Tools As You Use Them.

I've Come Up With A Set Of Rules That Describe Our Reactions To Technologies: 1. Anything That Is In The World When You’re Born Is Normal And Ordinary And Is Just A Natural Part Of The Way The World Works. 2. Anything That's Invented Between When You’re Fifteen And Thirty-five Is New And Exciting And Revolutionary And You Can Probably Get A Career In It. 3. Anything Invented After You're Thirty-five Is Against The Natural Order Of Things.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Hitchhikers Guide

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The Last Ever Dolphin Message Was Misinterpreted As A Surprisingly Sophisticated Attempt To Do A Double-backwards-somersault Through A Hoop Whilst Whistling The 'star Spangled Banner', But In Fact The Message Was This: So Long And Thanks For All The Fish.

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

If Everyone Knew Exactly What I Was Going To Say, Then There Would Be No Point In My Saying It, Would There?

We Talked About How Easy It Was To Make The Mistake Of Anthropomorphizing Animals, And Projecting Our Own Feelings And Perceptions On To Them, Where They Were Inappropriate And Didn't Fit. We Simply Had No Idea What It Was Like Being An Extremely Large Lizard, And Neither For That Matter Did The Lizard, Because It Was Not Self-conscious About Being An Extremely Large Lizard, It Just Got On With The Business Of Being One. To React With Revulsion To Its Behavior Was To Make The Mistake Of Applying Criteria That Are Only Appropriate To The Business Of Being Human.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Arthur Dent: What Happens If I Press This Button? Ford Prefect: I Wouldn't- Arthur Dent: Oh. Ford Prefect: What Happened? Arthur Dent: A Sign Lit Up, Saying 'please Do Not Press This Button Again.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Marvin Was Humming Ironically Because He Hated Humans So Much.

I'd Far Rather Be Happy Than Right Any Day.

And As He Drove On, The Rainclouds Dragged Down The Sky After Him, For, Though He Did Not Know It, Rob Mckenna Was A Rain God. All He Knew Was That His Working Days Were Miserable And He Had A Succession Of Lousy Holidays. All The Clouds Knew Was That They Loved Him And Wanted To Be Near Him, To Cherish Him, And To Water Him.

When You Walk Through The Storm, Hold Your Head High And Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark! At The End Of The Storm Is A Golden Sky And The Sweet Song Of The Lark. Walk On Through The Wind Walk On Through The Rain Though Your Dreams Be Tossed & Blown Walk On, Walk On, With Hope In Your Heart And You'll Never Walk Alone!

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.

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

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.

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

Nobody Likes A Whistler, Particularly Not The Divinity That Shapes Our Ends.

Life! Don't Talk To Me About Life!

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.

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.

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

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.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy Offers This Definition Of The Word "infinite". Infinite: Bigger Than The Biggest Thing Ever And Then Some. Much Bigger Than That In Fact, Really Amazingly Immense, A Totally Stunning Size, "wow, That's Big", Time. Infinity Is Just So Big That By Comparison, Bigness Itself Looks Really Titchy. Gigantic Multiplied By Colossal Multiplied By Staggeringly Huge Is The Sort Of Concept We're Trying To Get Across Here.

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

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.

It Is Folly To Say You Know What Is Happening To Other People. Only They Know, If They Exist. They Have Their Own Universes Of Their Own Eyes And Ears.

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

Who Is This God Person Anyway?

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Hitchhikers Guide

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.

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