Douglas Adams
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?Collection: Gardening
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.Collection: Trust
Ever since Newton, we've done science by taking things apart to see how they work. What the computer enables us to do is to put things together to see how they work: we're now synthesized rather than analysed. I find one of the most enthralling aspects of computers is limitless communication.Collection: Science
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.Collection: Space
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.Collection: Experience
I don't believe it. Prove it to me and I still won't believe it.Collection: Truth
When you write your first book aged 25 or so, you have 25 years of experience, albeit much of it juvenile experience. The second book comes after an extra year sitting in bookshops. Pretty soon, you begin to run on empty.Collection: Experience
To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.Collection: Money
I think that growing up in a crowded continent like Europe with an awful lot of competing claims, ideas... cultures... and systems of thought, we have, perforce, developed a more sophisticated notion of what the word 'freedom' means than I see much evidence of in America.Collection: Freedom
Time is bunk.Collection: Time
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.Collection: Love
I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.Collection: Business
Computers are still technology because we are still wrestling with it: it's still being invented; we're still trying to work out how it works. There's a world of game interaction to come that you or I wouldn't recognise. It's time for the machines to disappear. The computer's got to disappear into all of the things we use.Collection: Technology
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.Collection: Design
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.Collection: Family
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.Collection: Freedom
We no longer think of chairs as technology; we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn't worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often 'crash' when we tried to use them.Collection: Technology
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.Collection: Time
The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.Collection: Learning
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.Collection: Science
Life is wasted on the living.Collection: Life
Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.Collection: Learning
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.Collection: Politics
He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.Collection: Dreams
Because the Internet is so new, we still don't really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that's what we're used to. So people complain that there's a lot of rubbish online, or that it's dominated by Americans, or that you can't necessarily trust what you read on the Web.Collection: Trust
I'm spending a year dead for tax reasons.Collection: Funny
I find the difference, for me, between having no money and having quite a bit is that the bills get bigger. And that's it. The lifestyle doesn't change.Collection: Money
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.
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.
We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.
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.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
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.
Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
Books are sharks... because sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.
I briefly did therapy, but after a while, I realised it is just like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can't fix the weather - you just have to get on with it.
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?
The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.
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.
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.
The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
I think the idea of art kills creativity.