Original artwork, not a still
Mostly Harmless · 1992
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
It is Murphy's Law with a better bedside manner: however carefully you protect a thing, someone will find a use for it you never imagined. Engineers, safety designers and software testers quote it as the polite version of 'users will break it', and the sting is that the failure lies in the designer's imagination, not the fool's.
Context reviewed
In context
Spoilers for Mostly HarmlessShow the scene
The sentence comes from Mostly Harmless (1992), the fifth book in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide series, which the first-edition cover called the fifth book in an 'increasingly inaccurately named' trilogy. It was the last Hitchhiker's book Adams wrote and the last he published in his lifetime. In the story Arthur Dent plans a sightseeing trip with Fenchurch, loses her in a hyperspace jump, and drifts on through a Galaxy that has gone wrong again. The foolproof remark has since become the standard citation whenever idiot-proofing is discussed.
Sources (3)
- Mostly Harmless (Wikipedia)Intro and Plot summaryReference checked
- Idiot-proof (Wikipedia)Feasibility sectionReference checked
- Fools on WikiquoteQuotes, alphabetised by authorReference checked
Context reviewed
