Quotes from Stanis?aw Lem

With the demise of imagination I inherited its residue, a kind of permanent disagreement with reality, more like an anger, though, than a rejection. My laughter had already been a denial, and a more effective kind, perhaps, than suicide.

Únicamente podéis comprender a alguien ajeno a vosotros en la medida en que se humanice. La falta de universalidad de la Inteligencia encerrada en las normas de una especie constituye un curioso purgatorio con la muralla ubicada en el infinito.

Instead of learning something about an alien intelligence, they had learned how close the bonds of mental kinship were between man and his computer. The nearness of the alien civilization-practically within arm's reach - became a separating distance that mocked their attempts to get to the heart of it.

A human being, appearances to the contrary, doesn't create his own purposes. These are imposed by the time he's born into; he may serve them, he may rebel against them, but the object of his service or rebellion comes from the outside.

He fell prey to a common fallacy. He wanted to philosophize, that is, to play God; for what is philosophy, in the end, but the desire to understand things to a degree greater than science permits?

Son dignos de compasión esos genios abortados, titanes de espíritu enano, mutilados desde el nacimiento por la naturaleza, que, en una de sus bromas siniestras, les impuso a la vez la falta de talento y el empeño de crear digno de un Leonardo; lo que la vida les trae es la indiferencia o la burla, y lo único que se puede hacer por ellos es escucharles con paciencia y fingir que su monomanía nos interesa.

Someone fond of paradoxes and sufficiently stubborn could go on doubting that the ocean was a living being. But it was impossible to deny the existence of its mind, whatever could be understood by the term. It had become quite clear that it was only too aware of our presence above it…

The factors that contributed to my becoming a mathematician are complex, no doubt, but one major factor was talent, without which I could have accomplished in my profession no more than could a hunchback in a championship track-and-field competition.

Science fiction involves the art of putting hypothetical premises into the very complicated stream of sociopsychological occurrences.

True, the guarantee he offered for dragon removal—dracolysis—was only statistical; though one ruler did pay him in similar coin, that is, in ducats that were only statistically good. After that, the insolent Basiliscus always used aqua regia to check the metallic reliability of his royal payments.

Not all the items are equally precious to me; some awaken cheerful memories, others bring to mind events full of dread and menace, but all—regardless—are evidence, full corroboration of the authenticity of my adventures.

The night stared me in the face, amorphous, blind, infinite, without frontier

some similarity—even the most remote—between Those Who Sent the code and the code's recipients was more than a fantasy to comfort the mind; it was a hypothesis on whose cutting edge hung the future of the entire Project. And I was certain of this from the first, from the moment I set foot on the HMV compound—certain that a lack of any similarity would render futile all efforts to understand the stellar message.

We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.

How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can't even understand one another?

We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos.

What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?' 'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.

If a man who can't count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky?

The only writers who have any peace are the ones who don't write. And there are some like that. They wallow in a sea of possibilities. To express a thought, you first have to limit it, and that means kill it. Every word I speak robs me of a thousand others, and every line I write means giving up another.

We're not searching for anything except people. We don't need other worlds. We need mirrors.

The night stared me in the face, amorphous, blind, infinite, without frontiers. Not a single start relieved the darkness behind the glass.

Is a mountain only a huge stone? Is a planet an enormous mountain?

For moral reasons ... the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created ... intentionally.