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
And for all the richest and most successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull and niggly, and they began to imagine that this was therefore the fault of the worlds they'd settled on.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on how even the most successful individuals can find life dull, leading them to falsely blame their surroundings.
In this quote, Douglas Adams suggests that despite achieving wealth and success, individuals can still experience a sense of dissatisfaction with life. This feeling of dullness and discontent may arise from their own perceptions rather than external circumstances, indicating that happiness is often rooted in one's perspective rather than one's achievements or environment.
Themes
SuccessDissatisfactionPerceptionWealthHappiness
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the pursuit of wealth, this quote can highlight the paradox of success and happiness.
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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