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from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Answer_to_Life%2C_the_Universe%2C_and_Everything

The Ultimate Answer

According to the Hitchhiker’s Guide, researchers from a pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent race of beings, construct Deep Thought, the second greatest computer of all time and space, to calculate the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. After seven and a half million years of pondering the question, Deep Thought provides the answer: "forty-two."

"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?"
"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is."

The search for the Ultimate Question

Deep Thought informs the researchers that it will design a second and greater computer, incorporating living beings as part of its computational matrix, to tell them what the question is. That computer was called Earth and was so big that it was often mistaken for a planet. The researchers themselves took the form of mice to run the program. The question was lost five minutes before it was due to be produced, due to the Vogons’ demolition of the Earth, supposedly to build a hyperspace bypass. Later in the series, it is revealed that the Vogons had been hired to destroy the Earth by a consortium of philosophers and psychiatrists who feared for the loss of their jobs when the meaning of life became common knowledge.

Give thanks for sorrow that teaches you pity; for pain that teaches you courage — and give exceeding thanks for the mystery which remains a mystery still - the veil that hides you from the infinite, which makes it possible for you to believe in what you cannot see.

Robert Nathan
(1894-1985, American novelist)

He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
(1878-1969, American minister)

If you want to find out about the road ahead, then ask about it from those coming back.

Chinese Proverb

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

Simone Weil
(1910-1943, French philosopher, mystic)

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882, American poet, essayist)

We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love.

Anna Jameson
(1794-1860, British essayist)

There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right.

Winston Churchill
(1874-1965, British statesman, Prime Minister)

If you look into your own heart, you find nothing wrong there, what is there to fear?

Confucius
(BC 551-479, Chinese ethical teacher, philosopher)

One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.

Anthony Robbins
(1960-, American author, speaker, peak performance expert, coach)