Wisdom of Douglas Adams

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


Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.


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


For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.


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.


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


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.


I don't believe it. Prove it to me and I still won't believe it.


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


I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.


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


I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?


I'm spending a year dead for tax reasons.


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.


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.


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


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


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?


It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.


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.


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.


Life is wasted on the living.


Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.


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.


The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.


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


The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.


The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.


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


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 must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.


Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.


Time is bunk.


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


We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.


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

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