Quotes from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin.
"And what happened?" pressed Ford.
"It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else becomes eerily easy.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“A fragrant breeze wandered up from the quiet sea, trailed along the beach, and drifted back to the sea again, wondering where to go next. On a mad impulse it went up to the beach again. It drifted back to sea.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“What is the point? We assume that every time we do anything we know what the consequences will be, i.e., more or less what we intend them to be. This is not only not always correct. It is wildly, crazily, stupidly, cross-eyed-blithering-insectly wrong!”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I'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 from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The 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 from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Share and Enjoy' is the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints Division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium-sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years.
The motto stands-- or rather stood-- in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young Complaints executives-- now deceased.
The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig," and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich. [...]

"But we have also," continued the management consultant, "run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying on ship's peanut." [...]

"So in order to obviate this problem," he continued, "and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and...er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Imagine" he said, "never even thinking, 'We are alone,' simply because it has never occurred to you to think that there's any other way to be.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“If there's any real truth, it's that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“For as long as he could remember, he’d suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“You come to me for advice, but you can't cope with anything you don't recognize. Hmmm. So we'll have to tell you something you already know but make it sound like news, eh Well, business as usual , I suppose.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“You know,” said Arthur thoughtfully, “all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I’ve had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was.” “No,” said the old man, “that’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“One day old Thrashbarg said that Almighty Bob had declared that he, Thrashbarg, was to have first pick of the sandwiches. The villagers asked him when this had happened, exactly, and Thrashbarg said it had happened yesterday, when they weren't looking. 'Have faith,' Old Thrashbarg said, 'or burn!'

They let him have first pick of the sandwiches. It seemed easiest.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won't engulf my head,
I can see by infrared,
How I hate the night.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep,
Sweet dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.
-Marvin”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“It's the story of my life. You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead. Now, as you look through this document you'll see that I've underlined all the major decisions I ever made to make the stand out. They're all indexed and cross-referenced. See? All I can suggest is that if you take decisions that are exactly opposite to the sort of decisions that I've taken, then maybe you won't finish up at the end of your life" --she paused, and filled her lungs for a good should--"in a smelly old cave like this!”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“I don't know what this great thing I'm meant to be doing is, and it looks to me as if I was supposed not to know. And I resent that, right?

"The old me knew. The old me cared. Fine, so far so good. Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain--my own brain--and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it. [...]

"But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't he, by changing my brain? Okay, that was his choice. This new me has its own choices to make, and by a strange coincidence those choices involve not knowing and not caring about this big number, whatever it is. That's what he wanted, that's what he got.

"Except this old self of mine tired to leave himself in control, leaving orders for me in the bit of my brain he locked off. Well, I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear them. That's my choice. I'm not going to be anybody's puppet, particularly not my own. [...]

"The old me is dead! [...] Killed himself! The dead shouldn't hang about trying t0 interfere with the living.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“They were a double pair of Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, which had been specifically designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The Universe is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore. Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor – at least no one worth speaking of.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Nobody likes a whistler, particularly not the divinity that shapes our ends.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“There was one planet off in the seventh dimension that got used as a ball in a game of intergalactic bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The Saab seethed off into the night. Arthur watched it go, as stunned as a man might be who, having believed himself to be totally blind for five years, suddenly discovers that he had merely been wearing too large a hat.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

About the author

Popular quotes

“I know Mark,' I reply. 'And I don't like him.'
'But I do. And part of being social means being civil to someone you don't like.'
'That's stupid. It's a huge world. why not just get up and walk away?'
'Because that's rude,' Jess explains.
'I think it's rude to stick a smile on your face and pretend you like talking to someone when in reality you'd rather be sticking bamboo slivers under your fingernails.”
― Jodi Picoult, quote from House Rules

“What kind of animal am I eating?'
Sam wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. 'It's named Saehrimnir.'
'Okay, first of all, who names their dinner? I don't want to know my dinner's name. This potato--is this potato named Steve?'
She rolled her eyes. 'No, stupid. That's Phil. The bread is Steve.”
― Rick Riordan, quote from The Sword of Summer

“Kishan spoke intently, "Kelsey is all that a man could ask for. She's perfect for you. She loves poetry and sits endlessly content while listening to you sing and play your guitar. She waited months for you to come after her, and she has risked her life repeatedly to save your mangy white hide. She's sweet and loving and warm and beautiful and would make you immeasurably happy."

There was a pause. Then I heard Ren say incredulously, "You love her."

Kishan didn't answer right away, but then said softly, almost so I couldn't hear it, "No man in his right mind wouldn't, which proves you aren't in your right mind.”
― Colleen Houck, quote from Tiger's Quest

“He's got to have the ability, and it seems to be fairly rare, to see things as they are and at the same time as they might have been. What we mean is the eye of an artist.”
― Jack Finney, quote from Time and Again

“God, that’s always the thing you have to decide with high school kids: what to make an issue of, what to let go.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from The Hour I First Believed

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.