Misattributed Douglas Adams Quotes

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer ~ Douglas Adams

There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature. But, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit. ~ Douglas Adams

Dirk Gently is the name under which I now trade. There are certain events in the past, I'm afraid, from which I would wish to disassociate myself."
"Absolutely, I know how you feel. Most of the fourteenth century, for instance, was pretty grim," agreed Reg earnestly. ~ Douglas Adams

So I reckon, what's so secret that I can't let anybody know I know it, not the Galactic Government, not even myself? And the answer is I don't know. Obviously. But I put a few things together and I can begin to guess. When did I decide to run for President? Shortly after the death of President Yooden Vranx. ~ 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? ~ Douglas Adams

Excuse me," said the owner of the metal hand in a voice that would have made an insect of a more sentimental disposition collapse in tears.
This was not such an insect, and it couldn't stand robots.
"Yes, sir," it snapped, "can I help you?"
"I doubt it," said Marvin. ~ Douglas Adams

I remembered once, in Japan, having been to see the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto and being mildly surprised at quite how well it had weathered the passage of time since it was first built in the fourteenth century. I was told it hadn't weathered well at all, and had in fact been burnt to the ground twice in this century. "So it isn't the original building?" I had asked my Japanese guide.
"But yes, of course it is," he insisted, rather surprised at my question.
"But it's burnt down?"
"Yes."
"Twice."
"Many times."
"And rebuilt."
"Of course. It is an important and historic building."
"With completely new materials."
"But of course. It was burnt down."
"So how can it be the same building?"
"It is always the same building."
I had to admit to myself that this was in fact a perfectly rational point of view, it merely started from an unexpected premise. The idea of the building, the intention of it, its design, are all immutable and are the essence of the building. The intention of the original builders is what survives. The wood of which the design is constructed decays and is replaced when necessary. To be overly concerned with the original materials, which are merely sentimental souvenirs of the past, is to fail to see the living building itself. ~ Douglas Adams

He paused just long enough to make them feel they ought to say something, and then interrupted. ~ Douglas Adams

Six pints of bitter, said Ford Prefect. And quickly please, the world's about to end. ~ Douglas Adams

He instituted this, er, Chair of Chronology to see if there was any particular reason why one thing happened after another and if there was any way of stopping it. Since the answers to the three questions were, I knew immediately, yes, no, and maybe, I realized I could then take the rest of my career off. ~ Douglas Adams

There you are, Arthur," said Ford with the air of someone reaching the conclusion of his argument, "you think you've got problems. ~ Douglas Adams

A nerd is someone who uses a telephone to talk to other people about telephones. ~ Douglas Adams

Long after his death his poems were found and wondered over. News of them spread like morning sunlight. For centuries they illuminated and watered the lives of many people whose lives might otherwise have been darker and dryer. Then, ~ Douglas Adams

Some fish were jumping up the beach and into the tree, which struck me as an odd thing for a fish to do, but I tried not to be judgmental about it. I was feeling pretty raw about my own species, and not much inclined to raise a quizzical eyebrow at others. The fish could play about in trees as much as they liked if it gave them pleasure, so long as they didn't try and justify themselves or tell each other it was a malign god who made them play in trees. ~ Douglas Adams

Many races believe that it was created by some sort of god, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. ~ Douglas Adams

My God," complained Arthur, "you're talking about a positive mental attitude and you haven't even had your planet demolished today. I woke up this morning and thought I'd have a nice relaxed day, do a bit of reading, brush the dog. ... It's now just after four in the afternoon and I'm already being thrown out of an alien spaceship six light-years from the smoking remains of the Earth!" He spluttered and gurgled as the Vogon tightened his grip. ~ Douglas Adams

Why can't people just learn to live together in peace and harmony?" said Arthur. Ford gave a loud, very hollow laugh. "Forty-two!" he said with a malicious grin. "No, doesn't work. Never mind. ~ Douglas Adams

How should a prospective writer go about becoming an author?
First of all, realise that it's very hard, and that writing is a grueling and lonely business and, unless you are extremely lucky, badly paid as well. You had better really, really, really want to do it. Next, you have to write something. Unless you are committed to novel writing exclusively, I suggest that you start out writing for radio. It's still a relatively easy medium to get into because it pays so badly. But it is a great medium for writers because it relies so much on the imagination. ~ Douglas Adams

Damn and blast British Telecom, shouted Dirk, the words coming easily from force of habit. ~ Douglas Adams

Once described by Eccentrica Gallumbits as the Best Bang since the Big One, ~ Douglas Adams

We inhabit a world in which we tend to put labels on each other and expect that we will then march through life wearing them like permanent sandwich boards. ~ Nick Webb

Marvin the Paranoid Android ~ Douglas Adams

And what voluntary organizations exist to help you rehabilitate afterward. ~ Douglas Adams

This planet 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. ~ Douglas Adams

It would not be completely unreasonable to suggest that if J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, and Dean Koontz were to get together in a time machine and travel back to early 1982 so that they could have a drunken, care-free, passionate orgy with Douglas Adams, that I might have been the love child of such a coming together. ~ Mark Sheldon

So after a hectic week of believing that war was peace, that good was bad, that the moon was made of blue cheese, and that God needed a lot of money sent to a certain box number, the Monk started to believe that 35 percent of all tables were hermaphrodites, and then broke down. ~ Douglas Adams

the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.'" As ~ Douglas Adams

I think I get some of my love of adult books that can be fun from Douglas Adams. ~ Erin Morgenstern

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

Driving a Porsche in London is like bringing a Ming vase to a football game. ~ Douglas Adams

I don't know why we keep building these fucking dams," Adams said in a surprisingly forceful British whisper. "Not only do they cause environmental and social disasters, they, with very few exceptions, all fail to do what they were supposed to do in the first place. Look at the Amazon, where they've all silted up. What is the reaction to that? They're going to build another eighty of them. It's just balmy. We must have beaver genes or something ... There's just this kind of sensational desire to build dams, and maybe that should be looked at and excised from human nature. Maybe the Human Genome Project can locate the beaver/dam-building gene and cut that out. ~ Douglas Adams

Out there?" said the man. "Out where?"
"Out there!" said Zarniwoop, pointing at the door.
"How can you tell there's anything out there?" said the man politely. "The door's closed. ~ Douglas Adams

The bits which did mean anything were often so wonderfully buried that no one could ever spot them slipping past in the avalanche of nonsense. ~ Douglas Adams

The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in. ~ Douglas Adams

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. ~ Douglas Adams

The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying 'And another thing ... ' twenty minutes after admitting he'd lost the argument. ~ Douglas Adams

There were so many different ways in which you were required to provide absolute proof of your identity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an epistemologically ambiguous physical universe. ~ Douglas Adams

Can't take it, huh?" said the man. Without the slightest movement he was now back, sitting cross-legged, on top of the pole forty feet in front of Arthur. "You come to me for advice, but you can't cope with anything you don't recognize. Hmmm. So we'll have to tell you something you already know but make it sound like news, eh? Well, business as usual, I suppose." He sighed and squinted mournfully into the distance. ~ Douglas Adams

The first letter was a "w," the second an "e." Then there was a gap. An "a" followed, then a "p," an "o," and an "l." Marvin paused for a rest. After a few moments they resumed and let him see the "o," the "g," the "i," the "z," and the "e." The next two words were "for" and "the." The last one was a long one, and Marvin needed another rest before he could tackle it. It started with "i," then "n," then "c." Next came an "o" and an "n," followed by a "v," an "e," another "n," and an "i." After a final pause, Marvin gathered his strength for the last stretch. He read the "e," the "n," the "c," and at last the final "e," and staggered back into their arms. ~ Douglas Adams

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

Ford was beginning to behave rather strangely, or rather not actually beginning to behave strangely but beginning to behave in a way that was strangely different from the other strange ways in which he more regularly behaved. ~ Douglas Adams