There's a Douglas Adams quotation for every occasion
From The Salmon of Doubt:
We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
- 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.
Most of the time spent wrestling with technologies that don't quite work yet is just not worth it for end users, however much fun it is for nerds.
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.
All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.
From The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul:
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.
From The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:
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.
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Reality is frequently inaccurate.
From Mostly Harmless:
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's point of view without the proper training.
From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
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?
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
From Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:
There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.