The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy-quotes

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (11 March 1952 - 11 May 2001) Started as a comedy radio play on the BBC and expanded into a TV series, a series of novels, and a feature film. The story follows the adventures of Arthur Dent, the last human who hitched a ride off Earth moments before it was destroyed to make way for an interstellar bypass.

• "This planet [earth] 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"

• "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..."
• "This must be Thursday," said Arthur musing to himself, sinking low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

• "Six pints of bitter," said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse and Groom. "And quickly please, the world's about to end."

• "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." -Ford Prefect

• "Time affords us the ability to blame past errors on others while whole heartedly pronouncing our future successes." - Ford Prefect
• "[The Guide] says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick."
• "How do you feel?" he [Ford Prefect] asked.
  "Like a military academy," said Arthur, "bits of me keep on passing out."

• Ford stood up. "We're safe," he said.
  "Oh good," said Arthur.
  "We're in a small galley cabin," said Ford, "in one of the spaceships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet."
  "Ah," said Arthur, "this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of."
• "You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
  [Ford Prefect:] "Why, what did she tell you?"
  "I don't know, I didn't listen."
• "Please do not be alarmed," it said, "by anything you see or hear around you. You are bound to feel some initial ill effects as you have been rescued from certain death at an improbability level of two to the power two hundred and seventy-six thousand to against--possibly much higher. 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 of what is normal anyway."
• "One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide that fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was so renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so - but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid..."
• He [Arthur] had an odd feeling of being like a man in the act of adultery who is surprised when the woman's husband wanders into the room, changes his trousers, passes a few idle remarks about the weather and leaves again.
• 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.

• Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind of the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived.

• [...] in fact the message was this: So long, and thanks for all the fish. - Final message from the Dolphins, as they escape just prior to Earth's destruction,
• "Look," said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?" -

• Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity - distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.
• Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
• The answer to "the Great Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything",
• "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. -

• "What's up?" [asked Ford.]
  "I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there."
• 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.
• 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.
• Quite how Zaphod Beeblebrox arrived at the idea of holding a seance at this point is something he was never quite clear on.
  Obviously the subject of death was in the air, but more as something to be avoided than harped upon.
  Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at the prospect of being reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might just feel the same way about him and, what's more, be able to do something about helping to postpone this reunion.
• "Concentrate," hissed Zaphod, "on his name."
  "What is it?" asked Arthur.
  "Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth."
  "What?"
  "Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. Concentrate!"
  "The Fourth?"
  "Yeah. Listen, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father was Zaphod Beeblebrox the Second, my grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third..."
  "What?"
  "There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now concentrate."
• "Well, just who do you think you are, honey?" flounced the insect quivering its wings in rage, "Zaphod Beeblebrox or something?"
  "Count the heads," said Zaphod in a low rasp.
  The insect blinked at him. It blinked at him again.
  "You are Zaphod Beeblebrox?" it squeaked.
  "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, I heard you were dead."
  "That's right, I just haven't stopped moving yet."

• 'Yet Unnamed Man': "Beeblebrox, over here!"
  "No," called Zaphod. "Beeblebrox over here! Who are you?"
  "A friend!" Shouted back the man. He ran toward Zaphod.
  "Oh yeah?" said Zaphod. "Anyone's friend in particular, or just generally well-disposed to people?""
• "If I ever meet myself," said Zaphod, "I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's hit me." - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe,
• "I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?" - The Dish of the Day serving itself
• 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.
• On Earth – when there had been an Earth, before it was demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass – the problem had been with cars. The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another – particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish
• The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
  
  To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
• "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?" - The Ruler of the Universe
• On being left in a parking lot for 500 million years: "The first ten million years were the worst. 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 sort of a decline" - Marvin The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
• Marvin: "I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."
  Zem: "Er, five."
  Marvin: "Wrong. You see?"
  The mattress was much impressed by this and realised that it was in the presence of a not unremarkable mind. -- Life, the Universe and Everything
• "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." - Arthur, before nearly destroying the Universe.
• "There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that provides the difficulties."
• The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizable number 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.
• The sign said:
  Hold stick near centre of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.
  'It seemed to me,' said Wonko the Sane, 'that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.' - c. 31; Wonko the Sane telling Arthur and Fenchurch about the Asylum
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [...] says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that 'it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.'
  'In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.' -
• 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.
• It wasn't merely that their left hand didn't always know what their right hand was doing, so to speak; quite often their right hand had a pretty hazy notion as well.
• The thing he realized about the windows was this: because they had been converted into openable windows after they had first been designed to be impregnable, they were, in fact, much less secure than if they had been designed as openable windows in the first place.
• A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
• 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 or repair.
• "I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle. As soon as I reach some kind of definite policy about what is my kind of music and my kind of restaurant and my kind of overdraft, people start blowing up my kind of planet and throwing me out of their kind of spaceships!" - The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Radio Shows, Fit the Fourth
• Life, as many people have spotted, is, of course, terribly unfair. For instance, the first time the Heart of Gold ever crossed the galaxy the massive improbability field it generated caused two-hundred-and-thirty-nine thousand lightly-fried eggs to materialise in a large, wobbly heap on the famine-struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system. The whole Poghril tribe had just died out from famine, except for one man who died of cholesterol-poisoning some weeks later. The Poghrils, always a pessimistic race, had a little riddle, the asking of which used to give them the only tiny twinges of pleasure they ever experienced. One Poghril would ask another Poghril, “Why is life like hanging upside down with your head in a bucket of hyena offal?” To which the second Poghril would reply “I don’t know, why is life like hanging upside down with your head in a bucket of hyena offal?” To which the first Poghril would reply, “I don’t know either - wretched isn’t it?” (Fit the Ninth)
• What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can't move with no hope of rescue:
  Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far.
  Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far (which, given your current circumstances, seems more likely):
  Consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer.
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