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
It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True creativity and insight often seem obvious only in hindsight, yet they require a unique perspective to achieve.
This quote highlights the notion that groundbreaking ideas often appear simple or clear after they are introduced. Douglas Adams suggests that many people claim they could have come up with an idea that seems obvious in retrospect, but this overlooks the fact that it takes a unique and creative mind to make these insights manifest in the first place.
Themes
CreativityInsightPerspectiveObviousInnovation
In practice
Example use cases
In a keynote speech about innovation in technology, one might quote Adams to emphasize the value of original thinking.
More from Douglas Adams
All quotes →"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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