Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.
In the center lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn't lived long enough to be disappointed with its lot.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that a lack of experience can lead to a lack of disappointment or dissatisfaction.
This quote from Douglas Adams reflects on the nature of existence and the concept of disappointment. It presents a thought-provoking image of a sperm whale that, despite its demise, never experienced the disappointments that come with living a longer life. This can evoke a reflection on the burdens of life that come with time, experience, and awareness, suggesting that innocence or a short life may spare one from the pain of unmet expectations and the regrets that accompany human existence.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the burdens of living, you might quote this to highlight the contrast between innocence and experience.
More from Douglas Adams
All quotes β"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "Ask a glass of water."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Similar quotes
The failure to cultivate virtue, the failure to examine and analyze what I have learned, the inability to move toward righteousness after being shown the way, the inability to correct my faults-these are the causes of my grief.
Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.
We've had a debate about immigration in New Zealand for some time. Now what we're trying to champion in that conversation is a recognition that New Zealand has been built off immigration. I myself am a third-generation New Zealander.
I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it. But this separation of consciousness is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is to believe in an undivided being between us.
I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing.
I am absolutely against positive thinking. You will be surprised that if you don't choose, if you remain in a choiceless awareness, your life will start expressing something which is beyond both positive and negative, which is higher than both. So you are not going to be a loser. It is not going to be negative, it is not going to be positive, it is going to be existential.