To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

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

The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.

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...

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.

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher… or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.

The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola

On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was a small tray, on which say three bone china cups and saucers, a bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot full of the best...

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer

Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner.

This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem,...

you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.

One of the extraordinary things about life is the sort of places it’s prepared to put up with living.

For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire “intelligent” population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which tree...

I don’t believe it. Prove it to me and I still won’t believe it.

Totally mad. Utter nonsense. But we’ll do it because it’s brilliant nonsense.

One of the most blissful joys of the English language is the fact that one of its greatest practitioners ever, one of the guys on the very top table of all, was a jokesmith. Though...

Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.

A towel, [The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth...

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition ofthe word “Infinite”.Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some.Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, atotally stunning size, “wow, that’s...

Stomp stomp. Whirr. Pleased to be of service.Shut up.Thank you.Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp. Whirr. Thank you for making a simple door very happy.Hope your diodes rot.Thank you. Have a nice day.Stomp stomp stomp stomp....

Reality is frequently inaccurate.

How many roads must a man walk down?

Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one – more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity,...

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.

The moment at which two people, approaching from opposite ends of a long passageway, recognize each other and immediately pretend they haven t. This is to avoid the ghastly embarrassment of having to continue recognizing...

Zaphod marched quickly down the passageway, nervous as hell, but trying to hide it by striding purposefully.

I really didn’t foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course–the computer industry didn’t even foresee that the century was going to end.

I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed.

All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.

Religion… has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever… If someone votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as...

We can’t win against obsession. They care, we don’t. They win.

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...

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rules

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally uncomfortable on each.

It’s all right,’ he insisted, ‘I’m perfectly well. Thought I heard, well, a noise that startled me. But it was nothing. Just overcome with the tea fumes, I expect

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...

Ow! My brains!

A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with...

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...

I’m very glad you asked me that, Mrs Rawlinson. The term `holistic’ refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself...

In an infinite Universe anything can happen,” said Ford, “Even survival. Strange but true.

The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

Dave is one of my favorite sources of information and opinion on the Web. His opinions are passionately held, well-informed, intelligent, argumentative, and quite often wrong.

I guess when [novels] started, most early novels were just sort of pornography: Apparently, most media actually started as pornography and sort of grew from there. [Starship Titanic] is not a pornographic CD-ROM, I hasten...

The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to...

He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.

Having solved all the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except for his own, three times over, [Marvin] was severely stuck for something to do, and...