Let's See If We May Not Eff It

I've been a fan of Douglas Adams' work for several years now. We would listen, as a family, to his books in audio form during road trips. We listened to other books as well, but the Hitchhiker's Guide and Dirk Gently series were my favorites. I recently listened to The Salmon of Doubt unabridged, borrowed from the library, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Among the many gems of thought to be found in it was the following quote which not only points out a remarkably common logical fallacy but summed up a lot of thoughts I'd been having on...well...some stuff:

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'"

Maybe I'll expound another time, but for now, I'll just include a few other quotes I enjoy from interviews and his books:

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

"We don't have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it."

"If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat."

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

"(..) Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!"
"The what?" said Richard.
"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a ..."
"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity."
"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." ...
"You see?" he said dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see."

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."

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

"For Children: You will need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It's quite a simple difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week, whereas a fried egg comes out of a chicken. Like most things, of course, it isn't quite that simple. The fried egg isn't properly a fried egg until it's been put in a frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn't do to a Friday, of course, though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a Thursday, if you like, or on a cooker. It's all rather complicated, but it makes a kind of sense if you think about it for a while."

"All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others."

"Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."

"Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again. It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though."

"There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers just exactly what the universe is for and why we are here, that it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. Then there is a theory which states that this has already happened."

"Apparently, we need to think about the building being inhabited by dragons and look at it in terms of how a dragon would move around it. So, if a dragon wouldn’t be happy in the house, you have to put a red fish bowl here or a window there. This sounds like complete and utter nonsense, because anything involving dragons must be nonsense—there aren’t any dragons, so any theory based on how dragons behave is nonsense. What are these silly people doing, imagining that dragons can tell you how to build your house?"

"I love deadlines; I love the whooshing sound they make as they pass overhead."

"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."

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

"[Arthur Dent] hoped and prayed there wasn't an afterlife. Then, realizing the contradiction, he merely hoped there wasn't an afterlife."

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

"The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79."

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

"On the way back, they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life, and the obliteration of all other life forms."

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

"God's final message to Creation: Sorry for the inconvenience."