Today's Meme™: My favorite quote from Douglas Adams

[thatcrazycajun]

Snarkily snurched from several on my f-list: If you see this, post a quote from Douglas Adams, the late, great and dearly missed creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in your blog. Here's my fave, along with a brand-new userpic created by me for the occasion:

(From the Guide, in reference to the Babel fish)
   Now it is such a bizarrely impossible coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. The argument goes something like this:  "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
   "But," say Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
   "Oh, dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
   "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed at the next pedestrian crossing.

Comments

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

my favourite is the understated '"i see", said arthur, who didn't'

that, and the whole eddies in the space time continuum sequence :)

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

(regarding Agrajag's "multiple me-murdering" Arthur Dent statue: "It was the product of a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained."


A minor gripe not aimed at you: I've always thought that by Americanizing the end of the section you quoted (replacing "zebra crossing" with "pedestrian crossing," the editors of the stateside edition of the first book killed the joke; "Zebra crossing" refers to a specific crosswalk design, with thick white diagonal stripes. Thus the proving-black-is-white joke.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

I know, I know, but when you say "zebra crossing" to most readers from anywhere other than Britain or its non-US former colonies (i.e., American readers), they're liable to think of a literal crossing point for Hippotigris Dolichohippus. Here in the States, you don't generally find those much outside of safari-style wildlife preserves.