Quotes from Stanis?aw Lem

Apathy robbed me of the strength even to despise myself.

I didn't believe for a minute that this liquid colossus, which had brought about the death of hundreds of humans within itself, with which my entire race had for decades been trying in vain to establish at least a thread of communication—that this ocean, lifting me up unwittingly like a speck of dust, could be moved by the tragedy of two human beings. But

Manufacturers these days have peculiar problems: a package may recommend the virtues of its product by voice only, for it is not allowed to grab the customer by the sleeve or collar.

What was civilization ever, really, but the attempt by man to talk himself into being good?

All the wild beasts have been extinct for years, but it's perfectly possible to synthesize them autobiogenically. On the other hand, why be bound to what was once produced by natural evolution? The spokesman for surrealist zoology was most eloquent - we should populate our preserves with bold, original conceptions, not slavish imitations, we should forge the New, not plagiarize the Old.

Ale on jest przecie? rozstrojony. Elektryczny wariat... - ?adny wariat. ByÅ'eÅ› w sterowni? - Nie. Tu byÅ'em. - No. A ja byÅ'em. Szkoda, ?e nie widziaÅ'eÅ›, jak rozwalaÅ' nasze sondy. - To znaczy, ?e jak? Å»e oni go przestroili? Å»e jest ju? pod ich kontrolÄ…? Wszyscy mówiÄ… oni - pomyÅ›laÅ' Rohan. Jakby to naprawdÄ™ byÅ'y ?ywe, rozumne istoty... - A proton go wie. Podobno tylko siÄ™ rozstroiÅ'a Å'Ä…czno??.

maybe he fought it off and forgot about it, and he wasn't afraid, because he knew he'd never carry it out. Right, but now, imagine that suddenly, in broad daylight, among other people, he meets IT embodied, chained to him, indestructible. What then? What do you have then?

los que más gritan por la paz, son los primeros en quebrantarla.

If everything became 'artificial,' then nothing was 'artificial.

Human beings set out to encounter other worlds, other civilizations, without having fully gotten to know their own hidden recesses, their blind alleys, well shafts, dark barricaded doors. To give

Then what exactly is it that you design? He gave a proud smile. Bitless compositions. Bitless? You mean, from bits, the units of information? No, Mr. Tichy, the units of being bitten.

contact, the goal for which we are striving, is as vague and obscure as communion with the saints or the coming of the Messiah.

He assumed a manner that could be called circular irony. Everything he said, he said in quotes, with an artificial, exaggerated emphasis, and with the elocution of someone playing a succession of improvised, ad hoc roles. Therefore, whoever did not know him long and well was confounded, for it seemed impossible ever to tell what the man thought true and what false, and when he was speaking seriously and when he was merely amusing himself with words.

As one whose genius has been duly certified by several dozen learned biographers, I think I may say a word or two on the topic of intellectual summits; which is simply that clarity of thought is a shining point in a vast expanse of unrelieved darkness. Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom, and its typical cowardice is to bathe in its own glow and avoid, as much as possible, looking out beyond its boundary.

Too much beauty undermines the marriage vows, too much knowledge leads to isolation, and too much wealth produces madness.

Why do children learn about Columbus, the discoverer of America who discovered it only by accident, on his way to India, while there's not one word about the discoverer of the pickle? We could have managed without America, sooner or later America would have discovered itself, but not the pickle, and then there would have been nothing to sit on our plate beside a roast beef sandwich.

A real tank now costs about a million dollars, while a hallucinated one amounts to less than one-hundredth of a cent per person, or centispecter per spectator. A destroyer costs a dime. Today you could fit the whole arsenal of the United States inside a single truck.

he could come up with a better idea than anything proposed by all the scientists, the cyberneticians and strategists, with all their computers?

Each of us is aware he's a material being, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and that the strength of all our emotions combined cannot counteract those laws; it can only hate them.

It is the premise of science fiction that anything shown shall in principle be interpretable empirically and rationally. In science fiction there can be no inexplicable marvels, no transcendences, no devils or demons—and the pattern of occurrences must be verisimilar.

that according to Hogarth humanity is a hunchback who, in ignorance of the fact that it is possible not to be hunchbacked, for thousands of years has sought an indication of a Higher Necessity in his hump, because he will accept any theory but the one that says that his deformity is purely accidental, that no one bestowed it upon him as part of a master plan, that it serves absolutely no purpose, for the thing was determined by the twists and turns of anthropogenesis.

Quindi lei ti ama, e tu vuoi amarla. Non è la stessa cosa

You are doing all you can to stay human in an inhuman situation. Noble it may be, but it isn't going to get you anywhere. And I'm not so sure about it being noble-not if it's idiotic at the same time.

People do not want immortality,' I continued. 'They simply do not want to die. They want to live, Decantor. They want to feel the ground beneath their feet, see the clouds overhead, love other people, be with them, and think. Nothing more. Everything that has been said beyond that is a lie. An unconscious lie.