Quotes About Perception

This is not, however, an ideal Universe

I don't believe there's a horse in your bathroom.

We live in strange times. We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own.

scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting.

Arthur and Trillian had the fixed expressions of rabbits on a night road who think that the best way of dealing with approaching headlights is to stare them out.

This sentence is not true

I said 'dear lady,' explained Ford Prefect, because I didn't want her to be offended by my implication that she was an ignorant cretin-

BeÅŸ y?ld?r tamamen kör olduÄŸuna inanm??ken ans?z?n, asl?nda yaln?zca çok büyük bir ÅŸapka giymekte olduÄŸunu fark eden bir adam kadar ÅŸaÅŸk?nd?.

On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were fat more intelligent than man, for precisely the same reason

The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

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.

The chances of finding out what's really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do his hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied.

La prima cosa da capire a proposito degli universi paralleli... è che non sono paralleli. È importante rendersi conto che, a rigore, non sono neppure universi, ma è molto più facile cercare di capirlo un po' più tardi, dopo che ci si è resi conto che tutto quello che si è capito fino a quel momento non è vero.

When the girl sitting at the next table looked away for a moment, Dirk leaned over and took her coffee. He knew that he was perfectly safe doing this because she would simply not be able to believe that this had happened. He sat sipping at the lukewarm cup and casting his mind back over the day.

It folded back on itself like something that M. C. Escher, had he been given to hard nights on the town, which it is no part of this narrative's purpose to suggest was the case, though it is sometimes hard, looking at his pictures, particularly the one with all the awkward steps, not to wonder, might have dreamed up after having been on one, for the little chandeliers which should have been hanging inside were on the outside pointing up.

They were a double pair of Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, which had been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.

I shall sit alone in a darkened room, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything but a little grey old head, and in that little grey old head a peculiar vision of hideous blue and gold dangling things flashing in the light, and the smell of sweat, cat food and death.

So that you understand that just because you see something, it doesn't mean to say it's there. And if you don't see something it doesn't mean to say it's not there, it's only what your senses bring to your attention.

Time, we know, is relative. You can travel light years through the stars and back, and if you do it at the speed of light then, when you return, you may have aged mere seconds while your twin brother or sister will have aged twenty, thirty, forty or however many years it is, depending on how far you travelled. This will come to you as a profound personal shock, particularly if you didn't know you had a twin brother or sister.

ART: None. The function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and there simply isn't a mirror big enough—see point one.

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

As she lay beneath a pile of rubble, in pain, darkness, and choking dust, trying to find sensation in her limbs, she was at least relieved to be able to think that she hadn't merely been imagining that this was a bad day. So thinking, she passed out.

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the phrase, 'as pretty as an airport.' Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort.

Non è sufficiente credere alla bellezza di un giardino? Che bisogno c'è di credere che nasconda delle fate?