Douglas Adams Quotes

He was there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him.

The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything.

The possibilities that are suggested in quantum physics tell us that everything that we're looking at may not be in fact there, so the underlying nature of being is weird.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

It's so easy just to see the one-to-one narrative between presence and non-presence.

Light knows when you're looking at it.

...If there's a noise in the woods, and there's nobody around to hear it, is it really a noise?" "Of course it is," she replied calmly. "How did you reach that conclusion?" Beldin demanded. "Because there's no such thing as an empty place, uncle. There are always creatures around --wild animals, mice, insects, birds --and they can all hear." "But what if there weren't? What if the woods are truly empty?" "Why waste your time talking about an impossibility?

...it's just as bad to live in a place where what you do see isn't there as it is to live in one where what you don't see is.

An object dies when the gaze that lights on it has disappeared.

But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?

Consider the sunlight. You may say that it is near, yet if you pursue it from world to world you will never catch it. You may say it is far, yet it is right before your eyes. Chase it and it always eludes you; run from it and it is always there. From this example you can understand how it is with the true nature of things.

The candle is not lit To give light, but to testify to the night.

Acts have their being in the witness. Without him who can speak of it? In the end one could even say that the act is nothing, the witness all.

In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.

There are, of course, an infinite number of places where one is not, yet only one place where one actually is.

On the earth, even in the darkest night, the light never wholly abandons his rule. It is diffused and subtle, but little as may remain, the retina of the eye is sensible of it.

Those things that are in the light we behold from darkness.

Everything is illusion. Even that last sentence.

The mirror is believed the way a poem is believed. It's believed because it's there.

Is negative space the space you don't like, or the space that is not there? And if it's not there how can you tell?

The best proof of the specificity of the book is that it is at once a reality of the virtual and a virtuality of the real.

What do men know? Because they have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean we have all vanished.

Well, sir, if things are real, they’re there all the time." "Are they?" said the Professor; and Peter did not quite know what to say.

Would there be trees if we didn't see them?

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.