I started this project a long time ago, when I was devastated by the news of Douglas Adams' untimely demise, and sought to build him a shrine on the internet. Sadly, the project was never completed.... Maybe one day...

The Quotable (and not so Quotable) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

ALCOHOL

“Oh don’t give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit/ No, don’t you give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit/ For my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die/ Won’t you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit.” – Ancient Orion mining song.

“… The best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster… The effect of drinking a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.” – The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

ANGER

“You barbarians! I’ll sue the council for every penny it’s got! I’ll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled… until… until… until you’ve had enough. And then I will do it again! And when I’ve finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them! And I will carry on jumping on them until I get blisters, or I can think of anything even more unpleasant to do, and then…” – Arthur Dent reacting to the demolition of his house.

The ANSWER to LIFE, the UNIVERSE and EVERYTHING

“Forty-two.” – Deep Thought.

BYPASSES

“What do you mean, why’s it got to be built? It’s a bypass. You’ve got to build bypasses.” – L. Prosser.

Bypasses are devices which allow some other people to dash from point A to point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.

BULLDOZERS

“Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?”
“How much?”
“None at all.”
- L. Prosser explaining to Arthur Dent how much damage a bulldozer can do.

CIVILIZATION

The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?

DEATH

“I don’t want to die now! I’ve still got a headache! I don’t want to go to heaven with a headache, I’d be all cross and wouldn’t enjoy it!” – Arthur Dent.

“Hey this is terrific! Someone down there is trying to kill us!” – Zaphod Beeblebrox.

“This is it. We are now quite definitely going to die aren’t we?” – Arthur Dent.

DEPRESSION

“I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed.” – Marvin the Paranoid Android.

“Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don’t know why I bother to say it, oh God I’m so depressed.” – Marvin the Paranoid Android.

“Don’t feel you have to take any notice of me, please.” – Marvin the Paranoid Android.

“I only have to talk to somebody and they begin to hate me. Even robots hate me. If you just ignore me I expect I shall probably go away.” – Marvin the Paranoid Android.

DISMISSAL

“Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I’m standing?” – Marvin the Paranoid Android.

EVOLUTION

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

“Evolution? Who needs it?” – Vogon philosophy.

FACTS

“We don’t demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts.” – Vroomfondel.

FATE

“Did you realize that most people’s lives are governed by telephone numbers?” – Eddie, the Heart of Gold computer.

GOODBYES

“So long, and thanks for all the fish.” – the dolphins.

HELP

“If you ever find you need help again, you know, if you’re in trouble, need a hand out of a tight corner…”
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t hesitate to get lost.”
- Zaphod Beeblebrox’s great-grandfather offers Zaphod help.

HITCH HIKING

“Excuse me? Are you trying to tell me that we just stuck out our thumbs and some green bug-eyed monster stuck his head out and said, Hi fellas, hop right in I can take you as far as the Basingstoke roundabout?” – Arthur Dent.

“Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it.” – The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

HUMANS

… A carbon-based bipedal life form descended from an ape.

One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit to continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It’s a nice day, or You’re very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he bandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.

Human beings are great adaptors…

HYPERSPACE

“You’d better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”
“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
“You ask a glass of water.”
- Ford Prefect sharing with Arthur Dent the sensation of entering hyperspace.

IDEAS

“I freewheel a lot. I get an idea to do something, and, hey, why hot, I do it… Yeah, I work out how it can best be done, right, but it always works out. It’s like having a Galacticredit card which keeps on working though you never send off the cheques. And then whenever I stop and think – why did I want to do something – how did I work out how to do it? – I get a very strong desire to just stop thinking about it. Like I have now. It’s a big effort to talk about it.” – Zaphod Beeblebrox.

INTELLIGENCE

“Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge.” – Marvin the Paranoid Android.

“I was told to take you to the bridge. Probably the highest demand that will be made on my intellectual capacities today I shouldn’t wonder.” – Marvin the Paranoid Android.

“… I’m fifty thousand times more intelligent than you and even I don’t know the answer. It gives me a headache just to think down to your level.” – Marvin the Paranoid Android.

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, 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 around in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man – for precisely the same reasons.

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.

LIFE & LIFESTYLE

“Did I do anything wrong today, or has the world always been like this and I’ve been too wrapped up in myself to notice?” – Arthur Dent.

“This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.” – Arthur Dent.

“Life! Don’t talk to me about life.” – Marvin the Paranoid Android.

“Funny how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.” – Marvin the Paranoid Android.

“Life. Loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.” – Marvin the Paranoid Android.

“I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle.” – Arthur Dent.

“Life is wasted on the living.” – Zaphod Beeblebrox’s great-grandfather.

MASOCHISM

“That drink was individually tailored to meet your personal requirements for nutrition and pleasure.”
“Ah, so I’m a masochist on a diet am I?”
- Arthur Dent attempting to order coffee from a Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer.

MISERABLISM

“Look, I’m a bit upset about that.” – Arthur Dent.

MOTHER’S ADVICE

“You know, it’s at times like these, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”
“Why, what did she tell you?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”

The NON-EXISTENCE OF GOD

“The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’
“’But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’
“’Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
“’Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

PANICKING

“Don’t panic.”
“I’m not panicking!”
“Yes you are.”
“All right so I’m panicking, what else is there to do?”
“You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy’s a fun place. You’ll need to have this fish in your ear.”
- Ford Prefect advising Arthur Dent on how to cope with panicking.

“Who said anything about panicking? This is still just the culture shock. You wait till I’ve settled down into my situation and found my bearings. Then I’ll start panicking!” – Arthur Dent.

PENGUINS

“Ford, you’re turning into a penguin. Stop it.” – Arthur Dent.

PICK-UP LINES

“Hey doll, is this guy boring you? Why don’t you talk to me instead? I’m from a different planet.” – Zaphod Beeblebrox.

POLITICS

“The President in particular is very much a figurehead – he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to distract attention away from it.” – Encyclopaedia Galactica.

“Very very few people realize that the President and the Government have virtually no power at all, and of these few people only six know whence ultimate political power is wielded. Most of the others secretly believe that the ultimate decision-making process is handled by a computer. They couldn’t be more wrong.” – Encyclopaedia Galactica.

The POWER OF SPEECH and PERSUASION

The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler could talk all four legs off an Arcturan MegaDonkey – but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterwards.” – Deep Thought.

PREOCCUPATION

“Am I busy? Well, I’ve just got all these bulldozers and things to lie in front of because they’ll knock my house down if I don’t, but other than that… well, no not especially, why?” – Arthur Dent.

PROGRAMMING STRATEGIES

“Computer, if you don’t open that exit hatch this moment, I shall zap straight off to your major data banks and reprogram you with a very large axe, got that?” – Zaphod Beeblebrox.

RELIGION

… Nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change…

RESISTANCE

“Resistance is useless!” – some young Vogon guard on board Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz’s flagship.

SHOCK

When you’re cruising down the road in the fast lane and you lazily sail past a few hard-driving cars and are feeling pretty pleased with yourself and then accidentally change down from fourth to first instead of third thus making your engine leap out of your bonnet in a rather ugly mess, it tends to throw you off your stride…

STRESS

In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is never possible to be further than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace, which really isn’t very far, so such signals are to minute to be noticed.

SURVIVING VACUUM

“… The hatchway in front of us will open automatically in a few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect and asphyxiate. If you take a lungful of air with you you can stand up to thirty seconds of course…” – Ford Prefect.

“… What with space being the mindboggling size it is the chances of getting picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand seven hundred and nine to one against.” – The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

TIME

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” – Ford Prefect.

TOURISM

“Desolate little hole if you ask me. I could have more fun in a cat litter.” – Ford Prefect, on Magrathea.

TOWELS

“A towel… is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value… More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value… Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win though, and still know where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.” –The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

TRUST

“Myself I’d trust him to the end of the Earth.”
“Oh yes, and how far’s that?”
“About twelve minutes away.”
– Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, regarding Mr. Prosser's trustworthiness.

VOGONS

Of all the races in all of the Galaxy who could have come and said a big hello to planet Earth, he thought, didn’t it just have to be the Vogons.

“On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.” – The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

“They’ve got as much sex appeal as a road accident.” – Ford Prefect.

Anatomical analysis of the Vogon reveals that its brain was originally a badly deformed, misplaced and dyspeptic liver.

WHY YOU SHOULD BUY THE HITCH HIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one – more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.