WIST

What I love the most about deadlines is the whooshing sound they make as they go by.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
(Attributed)

When you blame others, you give up your power to change.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
(Attributed)

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experiences of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
Last Chance to See (1991)

I am rarely happier than when spending entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
Last Chance to See (1991)

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 (1952-2001) English writer
Mostly Harmless (1992)

A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
Mostly Harmless (1992)

Generally, old media don’t die. They just have to grow old gracefully. Guess what, we still have stone masons. They haven’t been the primary purveyors of the written word for a while now of course, but they still have a role because you wouldn’t want a TV screen on your headstone.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Future (2001)

“You’d better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”
“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
“You ask a glass of water.”

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, ch. 6

For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, ch. 23 (1979)

It’s no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase “As pretty as an airport” appear.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

There is a theory which states that if anybody ever 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.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Epigraph (1980)

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

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 (1952-2001) English writer
Speech, Digital Biota 2 conference, Cambridge, UK (Sep 1998)
Full speech