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The Seat Received Him In A Loose And Distant Kind Of Way, Like An Aunt Who Disapproves Of The Last Fifteen Years Of Your Life And Will Therefore Furnish You With A Basic Sherry, But Refuses To Catch Your Eye.

-Douglas Adams

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The Seat Received Him

Douglas Adams

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Ford Carried On Counting Quietly. This Is About The Most Aggressive Thing You Can Do To A Computer, The Equivalent Of Going Up To A Human Being And Saying "blood...blood...blood...blood...

'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.'

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.

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

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.

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

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.

It Was None The Less A Perfectly Ordinary Horse, Such As Convergent Evolution Has Produced In Many Of The Places That Life Is To Be Found. They Have Always Understood A Great Deal More Than They Let On. It Is Difficult To Be Sat On All Day, Every Day, By Some Other Creature, Without Forming An Opinion About Them.

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

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?

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.

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

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

"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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Are Some People You Like Immediately, Some Whom You Think You Might Learn To Like In The Fullness Of Time, And Some That You Simply Want To Push Away From You With A Sharp Stick.

Obviously Somebody Had Been Appallingly Incompetent And He Hoped To God It Wasn't Him.

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

If It Looks Like A Duck, And Quacks Like A Duck, We Have At Least To Consider The Possibility That We Have A Small Aquatic Bird Of The Family Anatidae On Our Hands.

Structural Linguistics Is A Bitterly Divided And Unhappy Profession, And A Large Number Of Its Practitioners Spend Many Nights Drowning Their Sorrows In Ouisghian Zodahs.

I May Not Have Gone Where I Intended To Go, But I Think I Have Ended Up Where I Intended To Be.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

The Future Of Computer Power Is Pure Simplicity.

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

Far Out In The Uncharted Backwaters Of The Unfashionable End Of The Western Spiral Arm Of The Galaxy Lies A Small Unregarded Yellow Pizza.

Meanwhile, The Poor Babel Fish, By Effectively Removing All Barriers To Communication Between Different Races And Cultures, Has Caused More And Bloodier Wars Than Anything Else In The History Of Creation.

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

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

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

Cigarette Smoke

"i Think We Have Different Value Systems." "well, Mine's Better."

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Impossible Things

Possible And Impossible

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

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

The Books People Are Writing Today, They're Too Long. You Get A Little Bit Of Plot, And Then Pages And Pages Of Creative Writing. They Teach Classes In How To Do This. They Should Teach Classes In How To Stop!

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.

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.

Many Words And Expressions Which Only A Matter Of Decades Ago Were Considered So Distastefully Explicit That, Were They Merely To Be Breathed In Public, The Perpetrator Would Be Shunned, Barred From Polite Society, And In Extreme Cases Shot Through The Lungs, Are Now Thought To Be Very Healthy And Proper, And Their Use In Everyday Speech And Writing Is Evidence Of A Well-adjusted, Relaxed And Totally Un****ed-up Personality.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

There Was A Terribly Ghastly Silence. There Was A Terribly Ghastly Noise. There Was A Terribly Ghastly Silence.

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

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

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.

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.

It Startled Him Even More When Just After He Was Awarded The Galactic Institute's Prize For Extreme Cleverness He Got Lynched By A Rampaging Mob Of Respectable Physicists Who Had Finally Realized That The One Thing They Really Couldn't Stand Was A Smart-ass.

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

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

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).

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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."

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.

Space Is Really Big-really Big.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

There Is No Point In Using The Word 'impossible' To Describe Something That Has Clearly Happened.

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.

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

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.

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.

What Is This? Some Sort Of Galactic Hyperhearse?

Zaphod Beeblebrox

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

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.

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.

It Is Most Gratifying," It Said, "that Your Enthusiasm For Our Planet Continues Unabated, And So We Would Like To Assure You That The Guided Missiles Currently Converging With Your Ship Are Part Of A Special Service We Extend To All Of Our Most Enthusiastic Clients, And The Fully Armed Nuclear Warheads Are Of Course Merely A Courtesy Detail. We Look Forward To Your Custom In Future Lives ... Thank You.

Assumptions Are What We Don't Know We Are Making

Don't Spin Your Wheels And Stress. Take A Deep Breath, Center Yourself And Make A Plan.

Take A Deep Breath

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.

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.

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.

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

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.'

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.

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.

Who Is This God Person Anyway?

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Hitchhikers Guide

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.

My Capacity For Happiness," He Added, "you Could Fit Into A Matchbox Without Taking Out The Matches First

The Waiter Approached. 'would You Like To See The Menu?' He Said. 'or Would You Like To Meet The Dish Of The Day?' 'huh?' Said Ford. 'huh?' Said Arthur. 'huh?' Said Trillian. 'that’s Cool,' Said Zaphod. 'we'll Meet The Meat.

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

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.

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

Beethoven Tells You What It's Like To Be Beethoven And Mozart Tells You What It's Like To Be Human. Bach Tells You What It's Like To Be The Universe.

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!

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

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

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

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.

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

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

You Are Zaphod Beeblebrox?' 'yeah,' Said Zaphod, 'but Don't Shout It Out Or They'll All Want One.' 'the Zaphod Beeblebrox?' 'no, Just A Zaphod Beeblebrox, Didn't You Hear I Come In Six Packs?' 'but Sir,' It Squealed, 'i Just Heard On The Sub-ether Radio Report. It Said You Were Dead...' 'yeah, That's Right, I Just Haven't Stopped Moving Yet.

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

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

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

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

Life Is Wasted On The Living.

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

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

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

The Guide Is Definitive. Reality Is Frequently Inaccurate.

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

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.

Marvin Started His Ironical Humming Again. Zaphod Hit Him And He Shut Up.

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.

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.

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

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

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

Ok," He Said, "i Don't Like To Disturb You At What I Know Must Be A Difficult And Distressing Time For You, But I Need To Know First Of All If You Actually Realize That This Is A Difficult And Distressing Time For You.

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

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

Uncomfortable Feeling

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

In The Old Days, Writers Used To Sit In Front Of A Typewriter And Stare Out Of The Window. Nowadays, Because Of The Marvels Of Convergent Technology, The Thing You Type On And The Window You Stare Out Of Are Now The Same Thing.

If You Stick A Babel Fish In Your Ear You Can Instantly Understand Anything Said To You In Any Form Of Language.

Can't Stand All These Poisonous Creatures, All These Snakes And Insects And Fish And Things. Wretched Things, Biting Everybody. And Then People Expect Me To Tell Them What To Do About It. I'll Tell Them What To Do. Don't Get Bitten In The First Place. (quoting Dr. Struan Sutherland)

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 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 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.

I'm So Great Even I Get Tongue-tied Talking To Myself.

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

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.

This Must Be Thursday. I Never Could Get The Hang Of Thursdays.

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

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.

Earth: Mostly Harmless

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

Hitchhikers Guide

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.

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.

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.

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

My Own Strategy Is To Find A Car, Or The Nearest Equivalent, Which Looks As If It Knows Where It's Going And Follow It. I Rarely End Up Where I Was Intending To Go, But Often I End Up Somewhere I Needed To Be.

He Turned Slowly Like A Fridge Door Opening.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

In An Infinite Universe Anything Can Happen.

Anything Can Happen

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

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

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

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.

... 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.

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