There’s nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, ‘Well, okay, I’m going to do something of high artistic worth.’ – Douglas Adams
I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously. – Douglas Adams
Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books, and no matter what happens, books will survive. – Douglas Adams
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. – Douglas Adams
To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that, in Europe, we’re probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot. – Douglas Adams
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
I don’t think anybody would argue now that the Internet isn’t becoming a major factor in our lives. However, it’s very new to us. Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people ‘over the Internet.’ – Douglas Adams
Wandering around the web is like living in a world in which every doorway is actually one of those science fiction devices which deposit you in a completely different part of the world when you walk through them. In fact, it isn’t like it, it is it. – Douglas Adams
To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity. – Douglas Adams
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. – Douglas Adams
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. – Douglas Adams
I used to be a great fan of doing crosswords. When you’re fiddling around with anagrams, you get wonderful jumbles of syllables that become interesting. – Douglas Adams
I was the only kid who anybody I knew has ever seen actually walk into a lamppost with his eyes wide open. Everybody assumed that there must be something going on inside, because there sure as hell wasn’t anything going on the outside! – Douglas Adams
One of the most important things you learn from the Internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us.’ – Douglas Adams
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. – Douglas Adams
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. – Douglas Adams
Most of the time spent wrestling with technologies that don’t quite work yet is just not worth the effort for end users, however much fun it is for nerds like us. – Douglas Adams
I was the only kid who anybody I knew has ever seen actually walk into a lamppost with his eyes wide open. Everybody assumed that there must be something going on inside, because there sure as hell wasn’t anything going on on the outside! – Douglas Adams
Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. – Douglas Adams
Years and years ago, I did a game based on ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide’ with a company called Infocom, which was a great company. They were doing witty, intelligent, literate games based on text. – Douglas Adams
People wanted me to do a CD-ROM of ‘Hitchhiker’s,’ and I thought, ‘No, no.’ I didn’t want to just sort of reverse-engineer yet another thing from a book I’d already written. I think that the digital media are interesting enough in their own right to be worth originating something in. – Douglas Adams
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
My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees. – Douglas Adams
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be. – Douglas Adams
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