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."
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
Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
Walker EvansRead
It's important that we share our experiences with other people. Your story will heal you and your story will heal somebody else. When you tell your story, you free yourself and give other people permission to acknowledge their own story
Iyanla VanzantRead
The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it.
William StyronRead
Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity.
Alan TuringRead
Suffering... We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.
Anatole FranceRead
...ambition without pious restraint must end in failure, often involving in its ruin that beautiful reverence which solaces common men for the obscurity and poverty of their lot.
Russell KirkRead