Quotes About Perspective

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.

It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears.

It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion on them. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.

The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.

So the hours are pretty good then?' he resumed. The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths. Yeah,' he said, 'but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.

Arthur shook his head and sat down. He looked up. "I thought you must be dead …" he said simply. "So did I for a while," said Ford, "and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks. I kept myself amused all that time jumping in and out of a gin and tonic.

It's unpleasantly like being drunk. What's so unpleasant about being drunk? You ask a glass of water.

It seemed to me,' said Wonko the Sane, 'that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.

Alone of all the races on earth, they seem to be free from the 'Grass is Greener on the other side of the fence' syndrome, and roundly proclaim that Australia is, in fact, the other side of that fence.

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

What was the self-sacrifice? I jettisoned half of a much-loved and I think irreplaceable pair of shoes. Why was that self-sacrifice? Because they were mine! said Ford, crossly. I think we have different value systems. Well mine's better.

What do you get if you multiply six by nine? Six by nine. Forty two. That's it. That's all there is. I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe

something almost, but not quite entirely unlike tea

Funny, how just when you think life can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does.

I'd far rather be happy than right any day. And are you? No. That's where it all falls down, of course. Pity, said Arthur. It sounded like rather a good lifestyle otherwise.

You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.

Forty-two! yelled Loonquawl. Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work? I checked it very thoroughly, said the computer, and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is.

Imagine he said, never even thinking, 'We are alone,' simply because it has never occurred to you to think that there's any other way to be.

I think we have different value systems. —Arthur Well mine's better. —Ford

He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left.

Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, Hang the sense of it, and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day.

Ford looked at him severely. And no sneaky knocking down Mr Dent's house whilst he's away, alright? he said. The mere thought, growled Mr Prosser, hadn't even begun to speculate, he continued, settling himself back, about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

David Attenborough has said that Bali is the most beautiful place in the world, but he must have been there longer than we were, and seen different bits, because most of what we saw in the couple of days we were there sorting out our travel arrangements was awful. It was just the tourist area, i.e., that part of Bali which has been made almost exactly the same as everywhere else in the world for the sake of people who have come all this way to see Bali.

There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world.