Great Throughts Treasury

"It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "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. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only exception of this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs."

"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see... You mean, it comes from a world of lizards? No, said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people. Odd, said Arthur, I thought you said it was a democracy. I did, said Ford. It is. So, said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, why don't people get rid of the lizards? It honestly doesn't occur to them, said Ford. They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want. You mean they actually vote for the lizards? Oh yes, said Ford with a shrug, of course. But, said Arthur, going for the big one again, why? Because if they didn't vote for a lizard, said Ford, the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin? What? I said, said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, have you got any gin? I'll look. Tell me about the lizards. Ford shrugged again. Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them, he said. They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it. But that's terrible, said Arthur. Listen, bud, said Ford, if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin."

"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes."

"It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too."

"It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

"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 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."

"It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion on them. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever."

"It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears."

"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 most gratifying, it said, that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom in future lives ... thank you."

"It is not enough to believe in the beauty of a garden? What need is there to believe that hides the fairies?"

"It is of course perfectly natural to assume that everyone else is having a far more exciting time than you. Human beings, for instance, have a phrase that describes this phenomenon, ‘The other man’s grass is always greener.’ The Shaltanac race of Broopkidren 13 had a similar phrase, but since their planet is somewhat eccentric, botanically speaking, the best they could manage was, ‘The other Shaltanac's joopleberry shrub is always a more mauvy shade of pinky-russet.’ And so the expression soon fell into disuse, and the Shaltanacs had little option but to become terribly happy and contented with their lot, much to the surprise of everyone else in the Galaxy who had not realized that the best way not to be unhappy is not to have a word for it."

"It is worth repeating at this point the theories that Ford had come up with, on his first encounter with human beings, to account for their peculiar habit of continually stating and restating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or So this is it, we're going to die. His first theory was that if human beings didn't keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably shriveled up. After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this--If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working."

"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 package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane."

"It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smartass."

"It was a battered yellow Citroën 2CV which had had one careful owner but also three suicidally reckless ones."

"It was a couple of days before Kate Schechter became aware of any of these things, or indeed of anything at all in the outside world. She passed the time quietly in a world of her own in which she was surrounded as far as the eye could see with old cabin trunks full of past memories in which she rummaged with great curiosity, and sometimes bewilderment. Or, at least, about a tenth of the cabin trunks were full of vivid, and often painful or uncomfortable memories of her past life; the other nine-tenths were full of penguins, which surprised her. Insofar as she recognised at all that she was dreaming, she realised that she must be exploring her own subconscious mind. She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was very clear what the other nine-tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins."

"It was his subconscious which told him this — that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing."

"It was just that he was fun in such an exhausting way because, being in advertising, he always wanted you to know how much fun he was having and where he had got his jacket from."

"It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like but don't. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?"

"It would be hard to learn much less than my pupils, came a low growl from somewhere on the table, without undergoing a pre-frontal lobotomy."

"It'd be like a bunch of rivers, the Amazon and the Mississippi and the Congo asking how the Atlantic Ocean might affect them… and the answer is, of course, that they won't be rivers anymore, just currents in the ocean."

"It's good to leave your room super-messy when you're away. Whoever tries to break into your room will thought it has already been ransacked."

"It's guff. It doesn't advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn't actually get you anywhere."

"It's important to remember that the relationship between different media tends to be complementary. When new media arrive they don't necessarily replace or eradicate previous types. Though we should perhaps observe a half second silence for the eight-track. — There that's done. What usually happens is that older media have to shuffle about a bit to make space for the new one and its particular advantages. Radio did not kill books and television did not kill radio or movies — what television did kill was cinema newsreel. TV does it much better because it can deliver it instantly. Who wants last week's news?"

"It's not so much an afterlife' Said Arthur, 'more a sort of apres vie."

"It's part of the shape of the Universe. I only have to talk to somebody and they begin to hate me."

"It's quicker, easier, and involves less licking"

"It's reassuring to realize that everybody is as stupid as you are and that all we are doing when we are standing in the kitchen wondering what we came in here for is working."

"It's the story of my life. You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead. Now, as you look through this document you'll see that I've underlined all the major decisions I ever made to make the stand out. They're all indexed and cross-referenced. See? All I can suggest is that if you take decisions that are exactly opposite to the sort of decisions that I've taken, then maybe you won't finish up at the end of your life --she paused, and filled her lungs for a good should--in a smelly old cave like this!"

"It's unpleasantly like being drunk. What's so unpleasant about being drunk? You ask a glass of water."

"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."

"I've heard an idea proposed, I've no idea how seriously, to account for the sensation of vertigo. It's an idea that I instinctively like and it goes like this. The dizzy sensation we experience when standing in high places is not simply a fear of falling. It's often the case that the only thing likely to make us fall is the actual dizziness itself, so it is, at best, an extremely irrational, even self-fulfilling fear. However, in the distant past of our evolutionary journey toward our current state, we lived in trees. We leapt from tree to tree. There are even those who speculate that we may have something birdlike in our ancestral line. In which case, there may be some part of our mind that, when confronted with a void, expects to be able to leap out into it and even urges us to do so. So what you end up with is a conflict between a primitive, atavistic part of your mind which is saying Jump! and the more modern, rational part of your mind which is saying, For Christ's sake, don't! In fact, vertigo is explained by some not as the fear of falling, but as the temptation to jump!"

"I've never understood all this fuss people make about the dawn. I've seen a few and they're never as good as the photographs, which have the additional advantage of being things you can look at when you're in the right frame of mind, which is usually around lunchtime."

"Janx Spirit : Janx Spirit is a rather potent alcoholic beverage, and is used heavily in drinking games that are played in the hyperspace ports that serve the madranite mining belts in the star system of Orion Beta. The game is not unlike the Earth game called Indian Wrestling, and is played like this: Two contestants sit at either side of a table, with a glass in front of each of them. Between them would be placed a bottle of Janx Spirit — as immortalized in that ancient Orion mining song: Oh don’t give me no more of that Old Janx Spirit No, don’t you give me no 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. Each of the two contestants would then concentrate their will on the bottle and attempt to tip it and pour spirit into the glass of his opponent – who would then have to drink it. The bottle would then be refilled. The game would be played again. And again. Once you started to lose you would probably keep losing, because one of the effects of Janx spirit is to depress telepsychic power. As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the final loser would have to perform a forfeit, which was usually obscenely biological."

"Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have 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."

"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple.' Ah, well, I'm not sure I believe that."

"Just supposing, he said, just supposing --he didn't know what was coming next, so he thought he'd just sit back and listen--that there was some extraordinary way in which you were very important to me, and that, though you didn't know it, I was very important to you, but it all went for nothing because we only had five miles and I was a stupid idiot at knowing how to say something very important to someone I've only just met and not crash into lorries a the same time, what would you say... He paused, helplessly, and looked at her. I should do."

"Kate wondered for a moment how it was that eyes conveyed such an immense amount of information about their owners. They were, after all, merely spheres of white gristle. They hardly changed as they got older, apart from getting a bit redder and a bit runnier. The iris opened and closed a bit, but that was all. Where did this flood of information come from?"

"LAXOBIGGING (ptcpl.vb.) Struggling to extrude an extremely large turd."

"Let the past hold on to itself and let the present move forward into the future."

"Let us be dreamers, thinkers, speculative philosophers, or as our spouses would have it: Idiots"

"Life is wasted on the living."

"Life, said Marvin dolefully, loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it."

"Life... is like a grapefruit. Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast."

"Like all Vogon ships, it looked as if it had been not so much designed, as congealed. The unpleasant yellow lumps and edifices which protruded from it at unsightly angles would have disfigured the looks of most ships, but in this case, that was sadly impossible. Uglier things have been spotted in the skies, but not by reliable witnesses."

"Listen, three eyes, he said, don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal."

"Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity — distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless"

"Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food."

"Man always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time."