Quotes About Meaning

His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.

You want to check your legal position, you do, mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job, aren't we? I mean, what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives you his bleeding phone number the next morning?

In the great debate that has raged for centuries about what, if anything, happens to you after death, be it heaven, hell, purgatory or extinction, one thing has never been in doubt—that you would at least know the answer when you were dead. Gordon Way was dead, but he simply hadn't the slightest idea what he was meant to do about it.

The bits which did mean anything were often so wonderfully buried that no one could ever spot them slipping past in the avalanche of nonsense.

Does the number," said Arthur gently, "forty-two mean anything to you at all?" "What? No, what are you talking about?" exclaimed Fenchurch.

Arthur! You're safe! A voice cried. Am I? said Arthur, rather startled. Oh, good.

Trillian had come to suspect that the main reason he had had such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did.

The barman reeled for a moment, hit by a shocking, incomprehensible sense of distance. He didn't know what it meant, but he looked at Ford Prefect with a new sense of respect, almost awe.

I want to make a headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let¡s call it my stomach.

Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and go to work?

The ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything is: 42

Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of.

He would continue to believe in it whatever the facts turned out to be, what else was the meaning of Belief?

Ah . . . ! What's happening? it thought. Er, excuse me, who am I? Hello? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Calm down, get a grip now . . . oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it?

he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

What? Excuse me? "La, a note to follow so . . ." What kind of lame excuse for a line is that? Well, it's obvious what kind of line it is. It's a placeholder.

She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was very clear what the other nine tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins. Gradually

You see what I have done?' he asked the ceiling, which seemed to flinch slightly at being yanked so suddenly into the conversation.

Das Leben, sagte Marvin schwermütig, hasse oder ignoriere es, lieben kannst du's nicht.

What did "psychosassic" mean? It was his own word and he vigorously denied that it meant anything at all.

Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity—distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The

Are you trying to tell me," said Arthur, slowly and with control, "that you originally . . . made the Earth?

What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than right any day.

And when I hear their questions, do you hear questions? What do their voices mean to you? Perhaps you just think they're singing songs to you. He reflected on this, and saw the flaw in the supposition. Perhaps they are singing songs to you, he said, and I just think they're asking me questions. He paused again. Sometimes he would pause for days, just to see what it was like.