The Wisdom of Douglas Adams

Tomorrow, May 25, is Towel Day, the day that Douglas Adams fans everywhere will carry around a towel in a show of solidarity and appreciation. Of course, if you know anything about hitchhiking the galaxy, you know that one should always have a towel on hand because it can be used for many things, including but not limited to: keeping you warm, sailing down a river, hand-to-hand combat, a distress signal, and, if it still seems clean enough, drying yourself off.

But that's not the only wise thing Douglas Adams wrote. The man was a brilliant fount of inspiration and advice, if you know how to look for it. So, in honor of Towel Day, I've collected some of my favorite bits of Douglas Adams's wisdom for your reading pleasure. Enjoy.

"A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."
The Salmon of Doubt

"Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

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

"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws."
Mostly Harmless

"There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick."
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

"He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see."
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

"There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened."
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

"There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again."
The Salmon of Doubt

"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."
Last Chance to See

"If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands."
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

"The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead."
Mostly Harmless

"Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot."
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

"Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.

Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer."
Mostly Harmless


"Yes, it is true that sometimes unusually intelligent and sensitive children can appear to be stupid. But stupid children can sometimes appear to be stupid as well. I think that's something you might have to consider."
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

"Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around."
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

"Rather than arriving five hours late and flustered, it would be better all around if he were to arrive five hours and a few extra minutes late, but triumphantly in command."
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

"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."
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

And of course,

What's your favorite Douglas Adams quote? Tell us in the comments!
Happy Towel Day!