THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

H2G2 (THE HITCH HIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY) QUOTES

• 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 about 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.

• Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. 

• He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

• Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. 

• If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

The answer to everything-

"All right," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question..."

"Yes..!"

"Of Life, the Universe and Everything..." said Deep Thought.
"Yes...!"
"Is..." said Deep Thought, and paused.
"Yes...!"
"Is..."
"Yes...!!!...?"
"Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

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.”

• Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.

What's up?" asked Ford.
I don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there.”

• One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human beings was their habit of 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 behavior. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.

• 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 Encyclopedia 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.

I like the cover," he said. "Don't Panic. It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day.”

• His planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

• And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

• 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."No," said the old man, "that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.” 

"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"Ask a glass of water!"

• Life,” said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.” 

• The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.

• Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity -distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.

• Marvin- "You think you've got problems. What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot? No, don't even bother answering. I'm 50,000 times more intelligent than you and even I don't know the answer." 

• Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much.

• I didn't ask to be made: no one consulted me or considered my feelings in the matter. I don't think it even occurred to them that I might have feelings. After I was made, I was left in a dark room for six months... and me with this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side. I called for succor in my loneliness, but did anyone come? Did they help?

Marvin: I've been talking to the main computer.
Arthur: And?
Marvin: It hates me.

• Marvin: Not that anyone cares what I say, but the restaurant is at the other end of the Universe. 

• Marvin on being left in a parking lot for 500 million years , "The first ten million years were the worst. And the second ten million: they were the worst, too. The third ten million I didn't enjoy at all. After that, I went into a bit of a decline." 

Zaphod Beeblebrox: There's a whole new life stretching out in front of you.
Marvin: Oh, not another one.



Marvin: "I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."
Zem: "Er, five."
Marvin: "Wrong. You see?"

Arthur: "Marvin, any ideas?"
Marvin: "I have a million ideas. They all point to certain death."Trillian: "that's just fine, really... just part of life"
Marvin: "Life. Don't talk to me about life."

• “Don't blame you," said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.

• Sorry, did I say something wrong?" said Marvin, dragging himself on regardless. "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. Here's another one of those self-satisfied doors. Life! Don't talk to me about life.” 

• “Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.” 

• I could calculate your chance of survival, but you won't like it.

• Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake 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.

• “There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?” 

• If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

• The President of the Universe holds no real power. His sole purpose is to take attention away from where the power truly exists.