"It doesn't DO anything" quote

Factual Questions
1

This has most likely been asked, but I tried searching the Straight Dope archives and didn’t find it and my account doesn’t let me search the forums (I looked over ten pages and didn’t find it). Sorry to bring it back up if it has been asked, but… A question that’s been mulled over on many places on the internet is the source of this quote, or something very similar: “What does it do?”, “It doesn’t DO anything. That’s the beauty of it”.

Lots of people have offered suggestions, but nothing for certain. If you know for sure where the quote came from, please reply.

2

Three pages of discussion from May and Early August.

Results: Several close (but not exact) matches.

3

jeez that sounds familiar
now i’ll be thinking about it all night and I won’t sleep - gee thanks :D:D

4

actually - somewhere in some thread (and I already closed the freakin window so I can;t provide the URL) it is attributed to the BBC TV version of Hitchhiker’s Guide

5

BWT - "google"ing it just leads to several dozen boards from various sites that are discussing this phrase to death

6

It doesn’t come from anywhere. Searching for the “source” of it will only lead to heartache.

7

So far, the closest “old” sighting seems to come from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emporer’s New Clothes.” There is a line that goes something like, “They (the clothes) feel like nothing. That’s the beauty of them!”

I have not seen any of the various filmed/videoed productions in recent memory to know whether or not a variation of that line appears in them. But that would be a good place to start.

8

Where does it come from? It doesn’t come from anywhere. That’s the beauty of it.

9

Well done! :cool:

10

The “quote” seems to be this endless recursive loop which, once you think you’ve found the root of it, appearently extends from some previous source, at infinium. I’m guessing that there is some kind of spacelike causal loop through time by which the phrase was responsible for initiating itselt like a Novikov Loop a la All You Zombies.

What does it do? It resonates, reinforcing its own amplitude until the entire universe is torn apart by the whole meaninglessness of it. That’s the beauty of it.

Stranger

11

For some reason, when I read the quote, I hear it in Robbie Coltrane’s voice. “Do? It doesn’t do anything.”