# Quote — Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

> "What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?"
>
> This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.
>
> Richard continued, "What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself."

- Author: [Douglas Adams](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams.md)
- Book: [Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/dirk-gentlys-holistic-detective-agency.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams#Dirk_Gently's_Holistic_Detective_Agency_(1987)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [science](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/science.md), [knowledge](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/knowledge.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/dirk-gentlys-holistic-detective-agency/what-really-is-the

## More from this book

> This time there would be no witnesses.

p. 1 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/dirk-gentlys-holistic-detective-agency/this-time-there.md)

> WFT-II was the only British software company that could be mentioned in the same sentence as such major U.S. companies as Microsoft or Lotus. The sentence would probably run along the lines of "WFT-II, unlike such major U.S. companies as Microsoft or Lotus ..." but it was a start.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/dirk-gentlys-holistic-detective-agency/wft-ii-was-the.md)

Topics: [humor](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor.md)

> The seat received him in a loose and distant kind of way, like an aunt who disapproves of the last fifteen years of your life and will therefore furnish you with a basic sherry, but refuses to catch your eye.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/dirk-gentlys-holistic-detective-agency/the-seat-received.md)

Topics: [humor](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor.md)