This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It takes people to move crowds in the right direction, crowds by themselves just stand around and mutter.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. … What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.
Readers assume information carried by Mass Media is true solely because it appears there. While Mass Media asks its audience to treat all media matters with a degree of skepticism, no one actually does. People expect Mass Media to do that for them, but it doesn’t. Whether it should is another issue entirely.
Money | News | People | Statistics |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
We're not obsessed by anything, you see, insisted Ford...And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win. I care about lots of things, said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty. Such as? Well, said the old man, life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords. Would you die for them? Fjords? blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. No. Well then. Wouldn't see the point, to be honest.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
There was one planet off in the seventh dimension that got used as a ball in a game of intergalactic bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole.
Earth | Feelings | Imagination | People | Thinking | Thought | Parent | Thought |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
The room was not a room to elevate the soul. Louis XIV, to pick a name at random, would not have liked it, would have found it not sunny enough, and insufficiently full of mirrors. He would have desired someone to pick up the socks, put the records away, and maybe burn the place down. Michelangelo would have been distressed by its proportions, which were neither lofty nor shaped by any noticeable inner harmony or symmetry, other than that all parts of the room were pretty much equally full of old coffee mugs, shoes and brimming ashtrays, most of which were sharing their tasks with each other. The walls were painted in almost precisely that shade of green which Rafaello Sanzio would have bitten off his own right hand at the wrist rather than use, and Hercules, on seeing the room, would probably have returned half an hour later armed with a navigable river.
Books | Evolution | Life | Life | Little | Thought | Thought |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
The story goes that I first had the idea for Hitchhikers while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck (or 'Spain' as the BBC TV publicity department authoritatively has it, probably because it's easier to spell).
Man |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the Q letter into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable.
Time |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
There was constant talk about hewing things and ravaging things and splitting things asunder. Lots of big talk of things being mighty, and of things being riven, and of things being in thrall to other things, but very little attention given, as I now realise, to the laundry.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
There was no way his imagination could feel the impact of the whole Earth having gone, it was too big. He prodded his feelings by thinking that his parent and his sister had gone. No reaction. He thought of all the people he had been close to. No reaction. Then he thought of a complete stranger he had been standing behind in the queue at the supermarket two days before and felt a sudden stab: the supermarket was gone, everyone in it was gone! Nelson’s Column had gone! and there would be no outcry, because there was no one left to make an outcry! From now on Nelson’s Column only existed in his mind. England only existed in his mind. A wave of claustrophobia closed in on him. He tried again: America, he thought, has gone. He couldn’t grasp it, He decided to start smaller again. New York has gone. No reaction. He’d never seriously believed it existed anyway. The dollar, he thought, has sunk for ever. Slight tremor there. Every Bogart movie has been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave him a nasty knock. McDonald’s, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald’s hamburger.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
Well, how much we have escape pods? - None. - Well counted? - Twice
Now from head to foot I am marble-constant: now the fleeting moon No planet is of mine.
Now my charms are all o'erthrown, and what strength I have's mine own, which is most faint: now, 'tis true, I must be here confin'd by you, Or sent to Naples. Let me not, since I have my dukedom got and pardon'd the deceiver, dwell in this bare island by your spell; bt release me from my bands with the help of your good hands. Gentle breath of yours my sails must fill, or else my project fails, which was to please. Now I want spirits to enforce, art to enchant; and my ending is despair, unless I be reliev'd by prayer, which pierces so that it assaults mercy itself, and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardon'd be, let your indulgence set me free. The Tempest, Act v, Epilogue
Now the hungry lion roars, and the wolf behowls the moon; whilst the heavy ploughman snores, all with weary task fordone. Now the wasted brands do glow, whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, puts the wretch that lies in woe in remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night, that the graves, all gaping wide, every one lets forth his sprite, in the church-way paths to glide. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act v, Scene 1
Now my love is thaw'd; which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire, bears no impression of the thing it was.
O my good lord, why are you thus alone? For what offense have I this fortnight been a banished woman from my Harry's bed? Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep? Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth, and start so often when thou sit'st alone? Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks and given my treasures and my rights of thee to thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy? In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watched, and heard thee murmur tales of iron wars, speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed, cry 'courage! To the field!' and thou hast talked of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, of Palisadoes, frontiers, parapets, of basilisks, of cannon, culverin, of prisoners' ransom, and of soldiers slain, and all the currents of a heady fight. Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war, and thus hath so bestirred thee in thy sleep, that beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow like bubbles in a late-disturbèd stream, and in thy face strange motions have appeared, such as we see when men restrain their breath on some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these? Some heavy business hath my lord in hand, and I must know it, else he loves me not. Henry IV, Act ii, Scene 3
Now the melancholy of God protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of changable taffata, for thy mind is a very opal. I would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be everything, and their intent everywhere, for that's it, that always makes a good voyage of nothing.