O maior problema em viajar no tempo

"One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can't cope with. There is also no problem about changing the course of history - the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.

"The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you for instance how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations whilst you are actually travelling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own father or mother."

- Retirado do capítulo 15 de The restaurant at the end of the universe

Jean-Paul Marat

"Nunca às coisas os seus verdadeiros nomes".

"São poucos os homens que têm ideias claras sobre as coisas, e a maior parte preocupa-se somente com as palavras. (...) Iludidos pelas palavras, não se horrorizam os homens com as mais infames, se decoradas de belos nomes; e horrorizam-nos as mais louváveis, quando aviltadas por nomes odiosos. Assim o artifício corrente dos ministérios é corromper os povos pervertendo o sentido das palavras".