# Douglas Adams

- Quotes: 348
- Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams

## Books

- [Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/dirk-gentlys-holistic-detective-agency.md) — 18 quotes
- [Last Chance to See](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see.md) — 71 quotes
- [Life, the Universe and Everything](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/life-the-universe-and-everything.md) — 41 quotes
- [Mostly Harmless](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/mostly-harmless.md) — 38 quotes
- [So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish.md) — 24 quotes
- [The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: Primary Phase](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-primary-phase.md) — 67 quotes
- [The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/the-long-dark-tea-time-of-the-soul.md) — 23 quotes
- [The Meaning of Liff](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/the-meaning-of-liff.md) — 7 quotes
- [The Restaurant at the End of the Universe](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/the-restaurant-at-the-end-of-the-universe.md) — 42 quotes
- [The Salmon of Doubt](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/the-salmon-of-doubt.md) — 17 quotes

## Recently added quotes

> Until 1987 Fiordland was the home of one of the strangest, most unearthly sounds in the world. For thousands of years, in the right season, the sound could be heard after nightfall throughout these wild peaks and valleys.
>
> It was like a heartbeat: a deep, powerful throb that echoed through the dark ravines. It was so deep that some people will tell you that they felt it stirring in their gut before they could discern the actual sound, a sort of wump, a heavy wobble of air. Most people have never heard it at all, or ever will again. It was the sound of the kakapo, the old night parrot of New Zealand, sitting high on a rocky promontory and calling for a mate.

p. 111 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/until-1987-fiordland.md)

> [On the kakapo’s tendency to freeze in confusion when faced with a predator:] It’s frustrating to think of the difference that language would make. The millennia crawl by pretty bloody slowly while natural selection sifts its way through generation after generation, favouring the odd aberrant kakapo, which is a little twitchier than its contemporaries, till the species as a whole finally gets the idea. It would all be cut short in a moment if one of them could say, “When you see one of those things with whiskers and little bitey teeth, run like hell.” On the other hand, 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.

p. 116 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/on-the-kakapos.md)

> I have a well-deserved reputation for being something of a gadget freak, and am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.

p. 38 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/i-have-a-well-deserved.md)

> I was feeling pretty raw about my own species because we presume to draw a distinction between what we call good and what we call evil. We find our images of what we call evil in things outside ourselves, in creatures that know nothing of such matters, so that we can feel revolted by them, and, by contrast, good about ourselves.

p. 48 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/i-was-feeling.md)

> It bothers me when they make up these colourful answers. I wish I could make them understand that if they don’t know the answer, or they think the right answer isn’t very interesting, it’s better to say so rather than just invent absolute nonsense.

p. 76 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/it-bothers-me-when.md)

> Charles flies his plane the same way my mother drives her car round the country lanes in Dorset. If you didn’t know she had done it invincibly every day of her life for years, you would be hiding in the footwell gibbering with fear instead of just smiling glassily and humming “Abide With Me.”

p. 87 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/charles-flies-his.md)

> I remembered once, in Japan, having been to see the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto and being mildly surprised at quite how well it had weathered the passage of time since it was first built in the fourteenth century. I was told it hadn’t weathered well at all, and had in fact been burnt to the ground twice in this century.
>
> “So it isn’t the original building?” I had asked my Japanese guide.
>
> “But yes, of course it is,” he insisted, rather surprised at my question.
>
> “But it’s been burned down?”
>
> “Yes.”
>
> “Twice.”
>
> “Many times.”
>
> “And rebuilt.”
>
> “Of course. It is an important and historic building.”
>
> “With completely new materials.”
>
> “But of course. It was burned down.”
>
> “So how can it be the same building?”
>
> “It is always the same building.”
>
> I had to admit to myself that this was in fact a perfectly rational point of view, it merely started from an unexpected premise. The idea of the building, the intention of it, its design, are all immutable and are the essence of the building. The intention of the original builders is what survives. The wood of which the design is constructed decays and is replaced when necessary. To be overly concerned with the original materials, which are merely sentimental souvenirs of the past, is to fail to see the living building itself.
>
> I couldn’t feel entirely comfortable with this view, because it fought against my basic Western assumptions, but I did see the point.

p. 148 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/i-remembered-once.md)

> I’ve heard a tape of collected kakapo noises, and it’s almost impossible to believe that it all just comes from a bird, or indeed any kind of animal. Pink Floyd studio outtakes perhaps, but not a parrot.

p. 118 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/ive-heard-a-tape.md)

> The thing [Komodo dragon] is just a monitor lizard, and yet it is massive to a degree that is unreal. As it rears its head up over the fence and around as it turns, you wonder how it’s done, what trickery is involved.

p. 43 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/the-thing-komodo.md)

> It [the kakapo] is an extremely fat bird. A good-sized adult will weigh about six or seven pounds, and its wings are just about good for waggling a bit if it thinks it’s about to trip over something—but flying is out of the question. Sadly, however, it seems that not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has also forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground.

p. 115 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/it-the-kakapo.md)

> For all my rational Western intellect and education, I was for the moment overwhelmed by a primitive sense of living in a world ordered by a malign and perverted god, and it coloured my view of everything that afternoon—even the coconuts. The villagers sold us some and split them open for us. They are almost perfectly designed. You first make a hole and drink the milk, and then you split open the nut with a machete and slice off a segment of the shell, which forms a perfect implement for scooping out the coconut flesh inside. What makes you wonder about the nature of this god character is that he creates something that is so perfectly designed to be of benefit to human beings and then hangs it twenty feet above their heads on a tree with no branches.
>
> “Here’s a good trick, let’s see how they cope with this. Oh, look! They’ve managed to find a way of climbing the tree. I didn’t think they’d been able to do that. All right, let’s see them get the thing open. Hmm, so they’ve found out how to temper steel, have they? Okay, no more Mr. Nice Guy. Next time they go up that tree, I’ll have a [Komodo] dragon waiting for them at the bottom.”
>
> I can only think that the business with the apple must have upset him more than I realized.

p. 47 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/for-all-my-rational.md)

> We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying.

p. 68 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/last-chance-to-see/we-are-not.md)