01c. 1976 ADI'm a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. 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 / quote ↗
02c. 1976 ADWhen I was young I used to have this nightmare about dying. I used to lie awake at night screaming. All my schoolfriends went to heaven or hell, and I was sent to Southend.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
03c. 1976 ADHaving not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
04c. 1976 ADAs soon as Mr. Prosser realized that he was substantially the loser after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew it.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
05c. 1976 ADAnd I write novels!" chimed in the other cop. "Though I haven't had any of them published yet, so I better warn you, I'm in a meeeean mood!Douglas Adams / quote ↗
06c. 1976 ADSlartibartfast's study was a total mess, like the results of an explosion in a public library.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
07c. 1976 ADHe wondered if it was safe to grin. Very slowly and carefully, he grinned. It was safe.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
08c. 1976 ADHis eyes passed over the solid shapes of the instruments and computers that lined the bridge. They winked away innocently at him. He stared out at the stars, but none of them said a word.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
09c. 1976 ADHe was a man who was charged with the work he did in life because he was not one to ask questions - not so much on account of any natural quality of discretion as because he simply could never think of any questions to ask....On the strength of which he had guaranteed himself regular employment for as long as he cared to live.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
10c. 1976 ADZaphod marched quickly down the passageway, nervous as hell, but trying to hide it by striding purposefully.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
11c. 1976 ADHe recalls a lot of family worry about what he was going to do, and while he still sent in the occasional sketch to radio shows, he acknowledges that his confidence was extremely low. Despite his subsequent success and wealth, this propensity for a lack of confidence has continued.“I have terrible periods of lack of confidence,” he explains. “I just don’t believe I can do it and no evidence to the contrary will sway me from that view. 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.”So has that approach helped him? “Not necessarily,” he shrugs.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
12c. 1976 ADI was once in San Francisco, and I parked in the only available space, which happened to be on the other side of the street. The law descended on me. Was I aware of how dangerous the manoeuvre I’d just made was? I looked at the law a bit blankly. What had I done wrong? I had, said the law, parked against the flow of traffic. Puzzled, I looked up and down the street. What traffic? I asked. The traffic that would be there, said the law, if there was any traffic. This was a bit metaphysical, even for me, so I explained, a bit lamely, that in England we just park wherever we can find a parking space available, and weren’t that fussy about which side of the street it was on. He looked at me aghast, as if I was lucky to have got out of a country of such wild and crazy car parkers alive, and promptly gave me a ticket. Clearly he would rather have deported me before my subversive ideas brought chaos and anarchy to streets that normally had to cope with nothing more alarming than a few simple assault rifles. Which, as we know, in the States are perfectly legal, and without which they would be overrun by herds of deer, overbearing government officers, and lawless British tea importers.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
13c. 1976 ADGilks sighed. ‘You’re a clever man, Cjelli, I grant you that,’ he said, ‘but you make the samemistake a lot of clever people do of thinking everyone else is stupid.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
14c. 1976 ADZaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion is the better part of valor, so was cowardice is the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
15c. 1976 ADThe available worlds looked pretty grim. They had little to offer him because he had little to offer them. He had been extremely chastened to realize that although he originally came from a world which had cars and computers and ballet and Armagnac, he didn't, by himself, know how any of it worked. He couldn't do it. Left to his own devices he couldn't build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
16c. 1976 ADDespite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn't think twice about buying something oven-ready become much more upset about a chicken that they've been on a boat with, so there is probably buried in the Western psyche a deep taboo about eating anything you've been introduced to socially.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
17c. 1976 ADI wanted to join Footlights,” he says. “I wanted to be a writer-performer like the Pythons. In fact I wanted to be John Cleese and it took me some time to realise that the job was in fact taken.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
18c. 1976 ADThe best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
19c. 1976 ADOne 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 / quote ↗
20c. 1976 ADAnd so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the treesin the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
21c. 1976 ADSo, like I said, these are a bunch of really sweet guys, but you wouldn't want to share a Galaxy with them, not if they're just gonna keep at it, not if they're not gonna learn to relax a little. I mean it's just gonna be continual nervous time, isn't it, right? Pow, pow, pow, when are they next coming at us? Peaceful coexistence is just right out, right? Get me some water somebody, thank you."He sat back and sipped reflectively.OK," he said, "hear me, hear me. It's, like, these guys, you know, are entitled to their own view of the Universe. And according to their view, which the Universe forced on them, right, they did right. Sounds crazy, but I think you'll agree. They believe in ..."He consulted a piece of paper which he found in the back pocket of his Judicial jeans.They believe in `peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life, and the obliteration of all other life forms'.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
22c. 1976 ADWe're not obsessed by anything, you see," insisted Ford."...""And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win.""I care about lots of things," said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty."Such as?""Well," said the old man, "life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords.""Would you die for them?""Fjords?" blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. "No.""Well then.""Wouldn't see the point, to be honest.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
23c. 1976 ADJane, who is much better at reading guide books than I am (I always read them on the way back to see what I missed, it’s often quite a shock), discovered something wonderful in the book she was reading. Did I know, she asked, that Brisbane was originally founded as a penal colony for convicts who committed new offences after they had arrived in Australia ? I spent a good half hour enjoying this single piece of information. It was wonderful. There we British sat, poor grey sodden creatures, huddling under our grey northern sky that seeped like a rancid dish cloth, busy sending those we wished to punish most severely to sit in bright sunlight on the coast of the Tasman Sea at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef and maybe do some surfing too. No wonder the Australians have a particular kind of smile that they reserve exclusively for use on the British.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
24c. 1976 ADThey wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.Douglas Adams / quote ↗
