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In the United States, for instance, the total number of people who have lost their lives in commercial plane crashes since the year 2000 would not be enough to fill Carnegie Hall even half full. In contrast, the number of people in the United States killed in car accidents over that same time is greater than the entire population of Wyoming.

— Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

Failing the marshmallow test—and being less successful in later life—may not be about lacking willpower. It could be a result of believing that adults are not dependable: that they can’t be trusted to keep their word, that they disappear for intervals of arbitrary length. Learning self-control is important, but it’s equally important to grow up in an environment where adults are consistently present and trustworthy.

— Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

Knuth has not had an email address since 1990. “Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.” He reviews all his postal mail every three months, and all his faxes every six.

— Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

So as you age, and begin to experience these sporadic latencies, take heart: the length of a delay is partly an indicator of the extent of your experience. The effort of retrieval is a testament to how much you know. And the rarity of those lags is a testament to how well you’ve arranged it: keeping the most important things closest to hand.

— Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

Regardless of whatever other challenges aging brings, older brains—which must manage a greater store of memories—are literally solving harder computational problems with every passing day. The old can mock the young for their speed: “It’s because you don’t know anything yet!”

— Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

I had reached a juncture in my reading life that is familiar to those who have been there: in the allotted time left to me on earth, should I read more and more new books, or should I cease with that vain consumption—vain because it is endless—and begin to reread those books that had given me the intensest pleasure in my past. —LYDIA DAVIS

— Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

We were just about to do nothing at all for a while but it can wait.”

— The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

— The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

about the bush. “Make it evil,” he’d been told. “Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them.

— The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I teleported home one night With Ron and Sid and Meg. Ron stole Meggie’s heart away And I got Sidney’s leg.

— The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this—“If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.”

— The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

— The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

How do you know you’re having fun if there’s no one watching you have it?

— The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams