The very first page of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion has this quote from the great Douglas Adams:

“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

Well, you don’t have to believe, but I counter that with deeds from the great Spike Milligan:

“It was a privilege to be Spike’s daughter. I believed in pixies and fairies – I saw them, that’s how real he made them. We would have tea parties and we would all get mini letters on tiny pieces of paper in tiny envelopes from them, made by Dad.

Once, on my birthday, he telephoned me in the middle of my party, pretending to be the fairy king. He told me there was a present wrapped in a rose petal at the bottom of the garden. My friends and I went tearing down there. Inside the rose petal was a golden bird cage with a tiny golden bird inside.

There was a note with it, from the fairies, saying they had been working on it for days.”

— Jane Milligan, The Evening Standard, 2003

Douglas Adams and Richard Dawkins are right, but I prefer Spike Milligan’s version.

Please don’t take this as an attack on Douglas Adams, his imagination far outstretches all of ours, it’s just a thought that occurred whilst reading the quote.

Our imagination makes the garden greater than it is.

But I too of course am weak to a good Douglas Adams quote, so here’s mine:

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”

— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe