If we think that the world is here for us we will continue to destroy it the way we have been destroying it, because we think we can do no harm. - Douglas Adams

Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this — partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.

Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made attempts to alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for titbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived.

What was the Sherlock Holmes principle? ‘Once you have discounted the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ ”

“I reject that entirely,” said Dirk sharply. “The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbably lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is that it is hopelessly improbable?...The first idea merely supposes that there is something we don’t know about, and...there are enough of those. The second, however, runs contrary to something fundamental and human which we do know about. We should therefore be very suspicious of it and all its specious rationality.