“The story so far: 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, amazon.comTagged: Life, The Universe, humor, Creation, Building the Earth
“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 t…”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Happiness, Materialism, Money, The Human Condition
“I'd far rather be happy than right any day.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Happiness, Being Right, Being Happy, Smart vs. Happy
“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.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Life, The Universe, Reality
“See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Proof, Truth, Science
“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.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Life, Perception, Perspective
“'Sir,' I said to the universe, 'I exist.' 'That,' said the universe, 'creates no sense of obligation in me whatsoever.’”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Life, Meaning, Obligation, Mankind, Human Nature
“'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?’”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Reality, Perception, The Past
“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.com
“"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."”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Paranoia, Fear, Mankind, The Human Condition
“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.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Opportunity, Life, Meaning
“Let the past hold on to itself and let the present move forward into the future.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Past, present, Future
“The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Advice, Life, Living, How To Handle Advice
“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, amazon.comTagged: Learning, Mankind, Human Nature
“Life is wasted on the living.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Life, Living, Being Alive, Embracing Life
“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: impossible, Possibility, Pessimism
“We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Uncertainty, Definitions, Rigidity, humanity, Human Nature
“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.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: The Universe, Life
“We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Obsession, Obsessiveness
“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.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Universe, Maniacs
“He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Genius, Intelligence, Competence, Foolishness
“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.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Life, Afterlife, Religion, prayer, humor
“God's Final Message to His Creation: 'We apologize for the inconvenience.'”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: God, Religion, Creation
“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Time, Perception, Life, Reality
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Foolishness, Fools, Mankind, Design, Development
“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 an…”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Technology, Generations, New Technology
“This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Life, Struggle, Thursday
“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, amazon.comTagged: Subconscious, Mind, Brain
“If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”— Douglas Adams, amazon.comTagged: Ego, Mankind, The Human Condition