Wit & Attitude Quote by Douglas Adams

Adams turns a seemingly polite design note into a deadpan indictment of human behavior. The setup borrows the language of engineering - "design", "completely foolproof" - then punctures it with a punchline that lands because it feels like a law of nature: no system is ever finished, because someone will always find a new way to misuse it. The wit isn’t just in calling people fools; it’s in crediting them with "ingenuity", a word usually reserved for inventors and problem-solvers. Adams flips the compliment into an insult and, in doing so, makes stupidity sound almost heroic in its persistence.

The subtext is a critique of technocratic optimism: the belief that careful planning can eliminate error. "Completely foolproof" is the bait. That absolute promise is what Adams distrusts, because it invites a duel between the designer’s assumptions and the user’s creativity. His real target isn’t only the fool, but the arrogance of the system-builder who imagines they’ve anticipated every edge case. The joke has teeth because it points to a familiar institutional reflex: blame the user when reality refuses to conform to the spec.

Contextually, it fits Adams’s broader project in The Hitchhiker’s Guide universe, where bureaucracy, gadgets, and grand theories keep collapsing under the weight of messy living beings. It also anticipates contemporary product culture: every "idiot-proof" interface becomes a dare, every safety feature a new set of workarounds. The line works because it treats failure not as an exception, but as an ecosystem.