Quotes from Douglas Adams

Most of the time spent wrestling with technologies that don't quite work yet is just not worth it for end users, however much fun it is for nerds.

Technology is the name we give to stuff that doesn't work properly yet

I didn't notice I was being set upon by a pickpocket, which I am glad of, because I like to work only with professionals.

We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.

We notice things that don't work. We don't notice things that do. We notice computers, we don't notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don't notice books.

Alltami (n.) The ancient art of being able to balance the hot and cold shower taps.

I think media are at their most interesting before anybody's thought of calling them art, when people still think they're just a load of junk.

I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it's art while it's being created.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else.

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.

Books are sharks... because sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.

The difference between us and a computer is that, the computer is blindingly stupid, but it is capable of being stupid many, many million times a second.

I wrote an ad for Apple Computer: "Macintosh - We might not get everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end".

I am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer.

I think a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to other people about telephones. And a computer nerd therefore is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer.

There are two things in particular that it [the computer industry] failed to foresee: one was the coming of the Internet(...); the other was the fact that the century would end.

The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.

What the computer in virtual reality enables us to do is to recalibrate ourselves so that we can start seeing those pieces of information that are invisible to us but have become important for us to understand.

Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.

42 is a nice number that you can take home and introduce to your family.

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.

Life is like a grapefruit. Well, it's sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have a half a one for breakfast.