Douglas Adams Quotes
March 11, 1952 – May 11, 2001
 The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time (2005) 
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More Douglas Adams Quotes
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.
Douglas Adams— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression "as pretty as an airport".
Douglas Adams— 1988 The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, ch.1.
Don't Panic.
Douglas Adams— 1979 The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, preface. These words are said to be written in large friendly letters on the cover of the Guide.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.
Douglas Adams— 1984 Title of novel.
Kate's spirits sank to the very bottom of her being and began to prowl around there making a low growling noise.
Douglas Adams— 1988 The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, ch.1.
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.
Douglas Adams— Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See (1990)
You are disoriented. Blackness swims toward you like a school of eels who have just seen something that eels like a lot.
Douglas Adams— The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy text adventure game (1985), published by Infocom.
Driving a Porsche in London is like bringing a Ming vase to a football game.
Douglas Adams— As quoted in Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Companion (1988) by Neil Gaiman
The idea that Bill Gates 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, and continues to do so today.
Douglas Adams— As quoted in The Guardian (1995), and in "Biting back at Microsoft" (5 June 2001)
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.
Douglas Adams— Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires TV program (1996)
There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. 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, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.
Douglas Adams— Speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge, UK, (1998)
A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."
Douglas Adams— Interview in The Daily Nexus (5 April 2000), reprinted in The Salmon of Doubt
"My name is Kate Schechter. Two 'c's, two 'h's, two 'e's, and also a 't', an 'r', and an 's'. Provided they're all there the bank won't be fussy about the order they come in. They never seem to know themselves."
Douglas Adams— Ch. 1, p. 20-21
You would probably not say that he was sleeping the sleep of the just, unless you meant the just asleep, but it was certainly the sleep of someone who was not fooling about when he climbed into bed of a night and turned off the light.
Douglas Adams— Ch. 3, p. 34
The explosion was now officially designated an "Act of God." But, thought Dirk, what god? And why? What god would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15:37 flight to Oslo?
Douglas Adams— Ch.6, p.77
Thor was the God of Thunder and, frankly, acted like it.
Douglas Adams— Ch. 7, p. 84
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.
Douglas Adams— Ch. 13, p. 156
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
Douglas Adams— Ch. 13, p. 159
It was his subconscious which told him this that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.
Douglas Adams— Ch. 17, p. 189
There was constant talk about hewing things and ravaging things and splitting things asunder. Lots of big talk of things being mighty, and of things being riven, and of things being in thrall to other things, but very little attention given, as I now realise, to the laundry.
Douglas Adams— Ch. 18, p. 198-199
It'd be like a bunch of rivers, the Amazon and the Mississippi and the Congo asking how the Atlantic Ocean might affect them… and the answer is, of course, that they won't be rivers anymore, just currents in the ocean.
Douglas Adams— His stated response to representatives of the music, publishing and broadcasting industries who had asked Douglas at a conference how he thought technological changes will affect them, apparently hoping his response would be something to the effect of, "not very much"
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.
Douglas Adams— In The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul; spoken by the character Dirk Gently
In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Douglas Adams— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, chapter 1. (Second novel of the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series).
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much, the wheel, New York, wars and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.
Douglas Adams— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), Chapter 23.
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
Douglas Adams— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (said by Ford Prefect).
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?
Douglas Adams— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), Chapter 16
Reg, as he insisted on being called, had a memory that he himself had once compared to the Queen Alexandra Birdwing Butterfly in that it was colorful, flitted prettily hither and thither, and was now, alas, almost completely extinct.
Douglas Adams— Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, 1987.
