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
Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote questions the purpose of life and the trivial pursuits people engage in.
Douglas Adams provokes thought about human existence by questioning the significance of our birth and death, while simultaneously highlighting the distractions we choose to immerse ourselves in, such as the obsession with technology and material possessions. The mention of 'digital watches' symbolizes a preoccupation with time and a frantic pace of life that may detract from understanding our true purpose.
Themes
PurposeExistenceLifeDeathDistractionTechnology
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life.
More from Douglas Adams
All quotes β"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "Ask a glass of water."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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