Douglas Adams's Quotes

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

Time is bunk.

I'm spending a year dead for tax reasons.

The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

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.

It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.

The difficulty with this conversation 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.

I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.

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.

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.

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

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.