Quote collection
578 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"From another direction he felt the sensation of being a sheep startled by a flying saucer, but it was virtually indistinguishable from the feeling of being a sheep startled by anything else it ever encountered, for they were creatures who learned very little on their journey through life, and would be startled to see the sun rising in the morning, and astonished by all the green stuff in the fields."
"The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner', but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish."
"In cases of major discrepancy its always reality thats got it wrong ... reality is frequently inaccurate."
"Don't spin your wheels and stress. Take a deep breath, center yourself and make a plan."
"Could be. I’m a pretty dangerous dude when I’m cornered.” “Yeah,” said the voice from under the table, “you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel."
"It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too."
"Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single fact took the scientific world by storm."
"Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was. "Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked."
"People who need to bully you are the easiest to push around."
"Earthmen are not proud of their ancestors and never invite them round to dinner."
"In an infinite Universe anything can happen."
"Dennis Hutch had stepped up into the top seat when its founder had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila."
"The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings."
"And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches."
"A nerd is someone who uses a telephone to talk to other people about telephones."
"If you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language."
"I have detected disturbances in the wash.' 'The wash?' 'The space-time wash.' 'Are we talking about some sort of Vogon laundromat, or what are we talking about?' 'Eddies in the space-time continuum.' 'Ah...is he. Is he.' 'What?' 'Er, who is Eddy, then, exactly?"
"I watched the gorilla's eyes again, wise and knowing eyes, and wondered about this business of trying to teach apes language. Our language. Why? There are many members of our own species who live in and with the forest and know it and understand it. We don't listen to them. What is there to suggest we would listen to anything an ape could tell us? Or that it would be able to tell us of its life in a language that hasn't been born of that life? I thought, maybe it is not that they have yet to gain a language, it is that we have lost one."
"There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature, but, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit."
""What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "Ask a glass of water.""