Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has become an international favorite. Originally a radio comedy series, it has since been adapted into stage books, shows, comic books, film, tv series, and a video game, with the books proving to be the most popular.
It follows the misadventures of Arthur Dent, who is the sole human survivor when Earth is vaporized to make way for a new hyperspace expressway route. Saved by his best friend, who turns out to be an alien, they go on a romp across a universe that’s full of seemingly crazy aliens and strange locales.
Best Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Quotes
This series is absolutely filled with humorously absurd narration and equally absurd characters who often provide witty and pithy remarks. Below are 42 of the best quotes you’ll read throughout the books.
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
“You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, 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.”
“Funny,” he intoned funereally, “how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.
The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the ‘Star Spangled Banner’, but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.
The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake. The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
It is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy fooling around with some leaves a little way off.
There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath.
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.
‘Forty-two,’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying “And another thing…”
“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 packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”
“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”
Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.
Here, for whatever reason, is the world. And here it stays. With me on it.
“Reality is frequently inaccurate.”
“If you’re a researcher on this book thing and you were on Earth, you must have been gathering material on it.”
“Well, I was able to extend the original entry a bit, yes.”
“Let me see what it says in this edition, then. I’ve got to see it.”
… “What? Harmless! Is that all it’s got to say? Harmless! One word! … Well, for God’s sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit.”
“Oh yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it’s still an improvement.”
“And what does it say now?” asked Arthur.
“Mostly harmless,” admitted Ford with a slightly embarrassed cough.
Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity—distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.
“This is not a gun for hanging over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with.”
“Eddies,” said Ford, “in the space-time continuum.”
“Ah,” nodded Arthur, “is he? Is he?” He pushed his hands into the pocket of his dressing gown and looked knowledgeably into the distance.
“What?” said Ford.
“Er, who,” said Arthur, “is Eddy, then, exactly, then?”
For a moment or two the old man didn’t reply. He was staring at the instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert Fahrenheit to centigrade in his head while his house is burning down.
“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”
“If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”
All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place.
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
“Science has achieved some wonderful things of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”
“And are you?”
“No. That’s where it all falls down of course.”
“I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed.”
“There is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later.“
“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
“All through my life I’ve had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was.”
“I don’t know what I’m looking for… I think it might be because if I knew I wouldn’t be able to look for them.”
Reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Provocative and borderline philosophical, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is best known for its cheeky and absurd humor. You might not get it now, but it’ll slam you when you least expect it.
Adams’ writings are rich with dry wit and sarcasm that it makes the end of the world oddly funny. His talent for weaving bits of seriousness in an otherwise book of laughs creates a delicious juxtaposition that’ll hook you into his storytelling.
From thought-provoking questions about divinity and our existence to ridiculous arguments about towels, Douglas Adams will surely leave you grinning from ear to ear with his series.
Did you enjoy reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Share your reading experience in the comments below!
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Cole is a blog writer and aspiring novelist. He has a degree in Communications and is an advocate of media and information literacy and responsible media practices. Aside from his interest in technology, crafts, and food, he’s also your typical science fiction and fantasy junkie, spending most of his free time reading through an ever-growing to-be-read list. It’s either that or procrastinating over actually writing his book. Wish him luck!
