Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, page 594 (in omnibus edition)

(Cross-posted from Commonplace)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in a moment of reasoned lucidity which is almost unique among is current tally of five million, nine hundred and seventy-three thousand, five hundred and nine pages, says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that "it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.

"In other words--and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxywide success is founded--their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws."