Mostly Harmless Quotes

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“You live and learn. At any rate, you live.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's point of view without the proper training.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“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.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Let the past hold on to itself and let the present move forward into the future.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.

Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself."

"Hang on, can I write this down?" said Arthur, excitedly fumbling in his pocket for a pencil.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It's just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It's like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that's now been taken away and hidden. The graphite's not important. It's just the means of revealing the indentations. So you see, astrology's nothing to do with astronomy. It's just to do with people thinking about people.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“She had what it took: great hair, a profound understanding of strategic lip gloss, the intelligence to understand the world and a tiny secret interior deadness which meant she didn’t care.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“I begged her, 'Please don't leave me stranded in the middle of some primitive zarking forest with no medical help and a head injury. I could be in serious trouble and so could she.'"
"What did she say?"
"She hit me on the head with the rock again," Ford responded curtly.
"I think i can confirm that was my daughter."
"Sweet kid."
"You have to get to know her," said Arthur.
"She eases up, does she?"
"No, but you get a better sense of when to duck.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“What was the self-sacrifice?"
I jettisoned half of a much-loved and I think irreplaceable pair of shoes."
Why was that self-sacrifice?"
Because they were mine!" said Ford, crossly.
I think we have different value systems."
Well mine's better.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“A beach house isn't just real estate. It's a state of mind.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“He had got himself a life. Now he had to find a purpose in it.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“I think we have different value systems." —Arthur
"Well mine's better." —Ford”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Sometimes if you received an answer, the question might be taken away.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universes are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“One of the extraordinary things about life is the sort of places it's prepared to put up with living.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“The fact that all of this was happening in virtual space made no difference. Being virtually killed by virtual laser in virtual space is just as effective as the real thing, because you are as dead as you think you are.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“She thought that trying to live life according to any plan you actually work out is like trying to buy ingredients for a recipe from the supermarket. You get one of those trolleys which simply will not go in the direction you push it and end up just having to buy completely different stuff. What do you do with it? What do you do with the recipe? She didn't know.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“You know,' he said, sitting back, reflectively, 'it's at times like this that you kind of wonder if it's worth worrying about the fabric of space-time and the causal integrity of the multidimensional probability matrix and the potential collapse of all waveforms in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash and all that sort of stuff that's been bugging me.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“He had a nasty feeling that that might be an idiotic thing to do, but he did it anyway, and sure enough it had turned out to be an idiotic thing to do. You live and learn. At any rate, you live.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Every single decision we make, every breath we draw, opens some doors and closes many others. Most of them we don't notice. Some we do.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“Fall, though, is the worst. Few things are worse than fall in New York. Some of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats would disagree, but most of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats are highly disagreeable anyways, so their opinion can and should be discounted.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“NO ADMITTANCE.
NOT EVEN TO AUTHORISED PERSONNEL.
YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME HERE.
GO AWAY.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“At every level, vital instructions were missing, and the instructions about what to do in the event of discovering that vital instructions were missing, were also missing.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“The villagers were absolutely hypnotized by all these wonderful magic images flashing over her wrist. They had only ever seen one spaceship crash, and it had been so frightening, violent and shocking and had caused so much horrible devastation, fire and death that, stupidly, they had never realized it was entertainment.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“If you are reading this on planet Earth then:

A. Good luck to you. There is an awful lot of stuff you don’t know anything about, but you are not alone in this. It’s just that in your case the consequences of not knowing any of this stuff are particularly terrible, but then, hey, that’s just the way the cookie gets completely stomped on and obliterated.

B. Don’t imagine you know what a computer terminal is.
A computer terminal is not some clunky old television with a typewriter in front of it. It is an interface where the mind and body can connect with the universe and move bits of it about.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless