50 Douglas Adams Quotes from Some of His Most Popular Works

Get ready to be entertained by these Douglas Adams quotes.

Douglas Adams has a long list of works and accomplishments from the 49 years that he lived. He was an English author, essayist, humorist, screenwriter, satirist, and dramatist.

The story goes that he was lying in a field one day looking at the stars with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europe next to him which made him decide to write a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This was just the start.

Douglas Adams had his hand in a number of works from his own hitchhiker’s series to Doctor Who and Monty Python. His humor and personality show throughout his work.

Douglas Adams quotes from The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

1. “The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.” – Douglas Adams

2. “Rather than arriving five hours late and flustered, it would be better all-around if he were to arrive five hours and a few extra minutes late, but triumphantly in command.” – Douglas Adams

3. “Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.” – Douglas Adams

4. “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.” – Douglas Adams

5. “I’ve had the sort of day that would make St. Francis of Assisi kick babies.” – Douglas Adams

6. “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” – Douglas Adams

7. “People who need to bully you are the easiest to push around.” – Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams quotes from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

8. “To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.” – Douglas Adams

9. “Reality is frequently inaccurate.” – Douglas Adams

10. “He has personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts.” – Douglas Adams

11. “Life is wasted on the living.” – Douglas Adams

12. “The secret of healthy hitchhiking is to eat junk food.” – Douglas Adams

13. “I’m so great even I get tongue-tied talking to myself.” – Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams quotes from The Salmon of Doubt

14. “I have terrible periods of lack of confidence. I just don’t believe I can do it and no evidence to the contrary will sway me from that view.” – Douglas Adams

15. “Beauty doesn’t have to be about anything. What’s a vase about? What’s a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart’s Twenty-third Piano Concerto about?” – Douglas Adams

16. “I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.” – Douglas Adams

17. “You’re paid a lot and you’re not happy, so the first thing you do is buy stuff that you don’t want or need—for which you need more money.” – Douglas Adams

18. “There’s always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it’s with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it’s one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.” – Douglas Adams

19. “He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left.” – Douglas Adams

20. “All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.” – Douglas Adams

21. “We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.” – Douglas Adams

22. “We notice things that don’t work. We don’t notice things that do. We notice computers, we don’t notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don’t notice books.” – Douglas Adams

23. “I vaguely remember my schooldays. They were what was going on in the background while I was trying to listen to the Beatles.” – Douglas Adams
If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of Beatles quotes that reach for a better world.

Humorous Douglas Adams quotes

24. “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” – Douglas Adams

25. “A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” – Douglas Adams

26. “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” – Douglas Adams

27. “Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.” – Douglas Adams

28. “Fall, though, is the worst. Few things are worse than fall in New York. Some of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats would disagree, but most of the things that live in the lower intestines of rats are highly disagreeable anyways, so their opinion can and should be discounted.” – Douglas Adams

29. “I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer” – Douglas Adams

30. “A learning experience is one of those things that say, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.” – Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

31. “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

32. “For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.” – Douglas Adams

33. “Did I do anything wrong today,” he said, “or has the world always been like this and I’ve been too wrapped up in myself to notice?” – Douglas Adams

34. “I’d far rather be happy than right any day.” – Douglas Adams

35. “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

36. “If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.” – Douglas Adams

37. “He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” – Douglas Adams

38. “Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” – Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams quotes from Mostly Harmless

39. “It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else’s point of view without the proper training.” – Douglas Adams

40. “A beach house isn’t just real estate. It’s a state of mind.” – Douglas Adams

41. “Every single decision we make, every breath we draw, opens some doors and closes many others. Most of them we don’t notice. Some we do.” – Douglas Adams

42. “Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen. Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.” – Douglas Adams

43. “Sometimes if you received an answer, the question might be taken away.” – Douglas Adams

44. “Let the past hold on to itself and let the present move forward into the future.” – Douglas Adams

45. “You live and learn. At any rate, you live.” – Douglas Adams

46. “He had got himself a life. Now he had to find a purpose in it.” – Douglas Adams

More Douglas Adams quotes

47. “Let’s think the unthinkable, let’s do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.” – Douglas Adams

48. “Don’t believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose.” – Douglas Adams

49. “All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place.” – Douglas Adams

50. “Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” – Douglas Adams

Did you enjoy these Douglas Adams quotes?

If you’ve never read or watched any of the works of Douglas Adams, you might want to check them out after reading through these quotes.

He had a love of writing, music, and creativity. He had a flair for science fiction but that wasn’t it. He even had his hand in computer games and similar projects.

For not even making it to the age of 50, Douglas Adams created many works and had some published after his untimely death. If you’re looking for something new to enjoy during your downtime, check out a list of his works and take your pick.

Did you enjoy reading these Douglas Adams quotes and sayings? Which of the quotes is your favorite? Let us know in the comment section below.