If you’re looking for Douglas Adams quotes about science, you’ve come to the right place. Here at Inspiring Lizard we collect thought-provoking quotes from interesting people. And in this article we share a list of the 43 most interesting quotes about science by Douglas Adams. Let’s get inspired!
Douglas Adams quotes about science
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time
Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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
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 chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
So this is it, ” said Arthur, “We are going to die.””Yes, ” said Ford, “except… no! Wait a minute!” He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur’s line of vision. “What’s this switch?” he cried.”What? Where?” cried Arthur, twisting round.”No, I was only fooling, ” said Ford, “we are going to die after all.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.
— Douglas Adams
I don’t accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me ‘Well, you haven’t been there, have you? You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid’ – then I can’t even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don’t think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don’t think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.
— Douglas Adams
My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre and that I am therefore excused from saving universes.
— Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? – because you’re not!
— Douglas Adams
First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.
— Douglas Adams
But what about the End of the Universe? We’ll miss the big moment.”I’ve seen it. It’s rubbish, ” said Zaphod, “nothing but a gnab gib.”A what?”Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let’s get zappy.
— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizeable proportion 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.
— Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
I think we have different value systems.” —Arthur”Well mine’s better.” —Ford
— Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Very strange people, physicists, ” he said as soon as they were outside again. “In my experience the ones who aren’t actually dead are in some way very ill.
— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
You mean you’ve been in this same set of rooms here for… two hundred years?’ murmured Richard. ‘You’d think someone would notice, or think it was odd.”Oh, that’s one of the delights of the older Cambridge colleges, ‘ said Reg, ‘everyone is so discreet. If we all went around mentioning what was odd about each other we’d be here till Christmas.
— Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Life, ” said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before–and thus was the Empire forged.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
No, ” he said, “look, it’s very, very simple … all I want … is a cup of tea. You are going to make one for me. Keep quiet and listen.” And he sat. He told the Nutri-Matic about India, he told it about China, he told it about Ceylon. He told it about broad leaves drying in the sun. He told it about silver teapots. He told it about summer afternoons on the lawn. He told it about putting in the milk before the tea so it wouldn’t get scalded. He even told it (briefly) about the history of the East India Company.”So that’s it, is it?” said the Nutri-Matic when he had finished. “Yes, ” said Arthur, “that is what I want.””You want the taste of dried leaves in boiled water?””Er, yes. With milk.””Squirted out of a cow?””Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose …
— Douglas Adams
A five-week sand blizzard?” said Deep Thought haughtily. “You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
This is flight 121 to Los Angeles. If your travel plans today do not include Los Angeles, now would be the perfect time to disembark.
— Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
He was following the Earth through its days, drifting with the rhythms of its myriad pulses, seeping through the webs of its life, swelling with its tides, turning with its weight.
— Douglas Adams
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Don’t blame you, ” said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Conceited little mega-puppy.
— Douglas Adams
The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any signs of leaving. Somebody did once look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago now, and there has been no follow up.
— Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
How many roads must a man walk down?
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
When one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had claimed for the planet they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl gargle gargle howl gargle gargle gargle howl slurrp uuuurgh should have a good time. Message repeats.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Zaphod had never heard of this. He believed that he had heard of all the fun things in the Galaxy, so he assumed that the Total Perspective Vortex was not fun.
— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.
— Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
Marvin: Look, look, no, just think. They left me – an ordinary, menial robot – to stop you – a gigantic, heavy-duty battle machine – whilst they ran off to save themselves… What do you think they would leave me with? Frogstar Robot: Well, er, something pretty damn devastating I would expect. Marvin: Expect? Oh yes, expect. I’ll tell you what they gave me to protect myself with, shall I? Frogstar Robot: Yes all right. Marvin: Nothing. Frogstar Robot: What? Marvin: Nothing at all. Not an electronic sausage. Frogstar Robot: Well, doesn’t that just take the biscuit!
— Douglas Adams
Now logic is a wonderful thing but it has, as the process of evolution discovered, certain drawbacks. Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else which thinks at least as logically as it does.
— Douglas Adams
Don’t Panic
— Douglas Adams
One moment I was sitting in your ship feeling very depressed, and the next moment I was standing here feeling utterly miserable. An Improbability Field I expect.
— Douglas Adams
The main reception foyer was almost empty but Ford nevertheless weaved his way through it.
— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
In other words – and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation’s Galaxywide success is founded – their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.
— Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
The Googleplex Star Thinker is a super-computer from the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity and has the ability to calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle during a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard.The Deep Thought computer call it a pocket calculator in comparison to itself.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.
— Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
You barbarians!’ he yelled. ‘I’ll sue the council for every penny it’s got! I’ll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled…until…until…until…until you’ve had enough.’Ford was running after him. Very very fast.’And then I will do it again!’ yelled Arthur, ‘And when I’ve finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It’s a nice day, or You’re very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being obstructively cynical.
— Douglas Adams
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish