Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.
Douglas AdamsRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote humorously suggests that if something exhibits certain characteristics, it should not be dismissed as something else.
Douglas Adams uses this quote to convey that when something clearly resembles a certain type, such as a duck, we should reasonably consider it to be that thing. This statement reflects a deeper philosophical idea about perception and reality, highlighting the importance of reasoning based on observable evidence rather than assumptions or prejudice.
Themes
DuckPerceptionRealityEvidencePhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about clear evidence, one might quote this to emphasize logical reasoning.
More from Douglas Adams
All quotes →"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "Ask a glass of water."
Douglas AdamsRead
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.
Douglas AdamsRead
Computers are still technology because we are still wrestling with it: it's still being invented; we're still trying to work out how it works. There's a world of game interaction to come that you or I wouldn't recognise. It's time for the machines to disappear. The computer's got to disappear into all of the things we use.
Douglas AdamsRead
What the computer in virtual reality enables us to do is to recalibrate ourselves so that we can start seeing those pieces of information that are invisible to us but have become important for us to understand.
Douglas AdamsRead
We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
Douglas AdamsRead
Similar quotes
Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.
John UpdikeRead
...while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.
Arthur Conan DoyleRead
I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.
Isak DinesenRead
I think the meaning of abortion is what the woman says it is: For a woman who wants a child but can't have this one, it can be sad; for a woman who doesn't want a baby, it can feel like a huge relief, like having your whole life given back to you.
Katha PollittRead
The mind spends most of the time lost in fantasies and illusions, reliving pleasant or unpleasant experiences and anticipating the future with eagerness or fear. While lost in such cravings or aversions, we are unaware of what is happening now, what we are doing now.
S. N. GoenkaRead
Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.
William HazlittRead