"My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes."

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

"Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm. The answer to "the Great Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything"

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

"I'd give you advice, but you wouldn't listen. No one ever does."

"Ford," he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

So long, and thanks for all the fish. Final message from the Dolphins, as they escape just prior to Earth's destruction.

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

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

"[Trillian] is one of the least benightedly unintelligent life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting."

The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect... You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd.

"If I ever meet myself," said Zaphod, "I'll hit myself so hard I won't know what's hit me."

The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

Ford, there is an infinite number of monkeys outside, who wants to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they have worked out.

It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

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. Preface