The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Quotes

The 9 most famous lines from Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), each with its speaker and the scene it belongs to. These are the quotes readers underline, copy into essays and put on walls - gathered in one place, explained in a line.

• “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.”

  - The opening sentence. Adams's Hitchhiker overture: cosmic scale deployed to make Earth - and everyone on it - precisely as important as it deserves.

• “Don't Panic.”

  - The Guide's cover. Two words, the most reassuring advice in science fiction - printed on the cover of the Galaxy's standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, in 'large friendly letters'.

• “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

  - Ford Prefect. Ford's Philosophy of Life the Universe and Everything, delivered to Arthur over a meal the plot does not have time for.

• “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.”

  - The narrator. The most-quoted Adams simile - the comedy of mismatched registers, one of maybe forty in the book that survive being quoted by strangers at parties.

• “Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

  - The Guide, on the Galactic Presidency. The Guide's political science entry - proving the book is a satire with teeth. (Anyone who can get themselves elected, on no account be allowed to do the job.)

• “Life! Don't talk to me about life.”

  - Marvin. The Paranoid Android's opening complaint - a brain the size of a planet, asked to open doors. Marvin's gloom is the book's only sincere emotion.

• “In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

  - The narrator. The Guide's cosmology in one sentence.

• “'Forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.”

  - Deep Thought. The answer to life, the universe and everything, seven and a half million years in the making.

• “For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.”

  - The narrator. The arrival of the Vogon fleet, deflated.

Why these lines survive

Douglas Adams’s sentences earn their fame by compression: each line carries the whole book’s argument in a form you can carry in your pocket. Read in order, the 9 quotes above also sketch the novel’s shape - the world it opens, the pressure it applies, the note it ends on. If you meet them before the book, nothing is spoiled beyond mood; if you meet them after, each one lands like a place you have been.

Quote collectors: pair this page with the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quiz to see which lines actually stuck, the book club questions when you want to argue about them, or how long the reread takes - about 3 hours and 15 minutes at an average pace. If the lines did their job and you want more of the same nerve, the books like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy list is next.

Want the whole shelf’s lines? Our Douglas Adams books in order guide lists every book.

How to use a quotes page

Three honest uses. Before reading: skim the first two quotes to taste the prose - if the voice does not pull you, the book will not either. During: mark which quote you actually reach in the text, because the distance between famous line and lived scene is where a book keeps its secrets. After: pick the one quote you would defend at dinner and check it against the discussion questions - a quote you can argue about is a quote you understood. What a quotes page is not for is replacing the book; five lines of Douglas Adams are an invitation, not a summary.

More quote collections

Dune quotes, Ender's Game quotes, Project Hail Mary quotes, The Martian quotes - or browse quotes from all 133 classics. Then see which of them stuck on the original book quiz.

Frequently asked questions