The best Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy quotes

So long and thanks for all the fish!

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.
  4. “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.”
  5. “Funny,” he intoned funereally, “how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”
  6. A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
  10. 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!"