Stanislaw Lem Quotes - Page 2

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• Behind every glorious facade there is always hidden something ugly.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Ugly, Facade, Glorious

  25 Copy quote

• Even a fool could see that one didn't need a war, nuclear or otherwise, to destroy oneself; the rising cost of weaponry could do that quite nicely.

  Stanislaw Lem

  War, Needs, Nuclear

  Stanislaw Lem (2002). “Peace on Earth”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Come, every frustum longs to be a cone, And every vector dreams of matrices. Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze: It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Dream, Humorous, Vectors

  STANISLAW LEM (1974). “THE CYBERIAD”

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• I believe in no final solutions.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Believe, Finals, Solutions

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• Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way

  Stanislaw Lem

  Book, Different, Way

  Stanislaw Lem (2012). “More Tales Of Pirx The Pilot”, p.11, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• To torture a man you have to know his pleasures.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Men, Pleasure, Torture

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• If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Men, Might, Sense Of Humor

  "Solaris". Book by Stanisław Lem, translated by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox. Chapter 12: "The Dreams", p. 184, 1970.

  20 Copy quote

• The first 90% of the job takes 90% of the time. The remaining 10% of the job requires another 90% of the time. The first condition of immortality is death.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Jobs, Firsts, Immortality

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• Where do consequences lead? Depends on the escort.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Escorting, Depends, Consequence

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• Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks it is Don Quixote.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Writing, Fighting, Thinking

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• I never loved totalitarianism and all the ideas of making mankind happy always seemed crazy to me.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Crazy, Ideas, Mankind

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• Man's quest for knowledge is an expanding series whose limit is infinity, but philosophy seeks to attain that limit at one blow, by a short circuit providing the certainty of complete and inalterable truth. Science meanwhile advances at its gradual pace, often slowing to a crawl, and for periods it even walks in place, but eventually it reaches the various ultimate trenches dug by philosophical thought, and, quite heedless of the fact that it is not supposed to be able to cross those final barriers to the intellect, goes right on.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Men

  Stanislaw Lem (1984). “His Master's Voice”, p.36, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  16 Copy quote

• The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Curiosity, Potatoes, Natural

  Stanislaw Lem (2012). “The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy”, p.252, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  20 Copy quote

• The number of one's possible fantasies is inversely proportional to the amount of one's liquid assets. For him who has everything dreams are no longer possible.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Dream, Numbers, Liquid

  Stanislaw Lem (2002). “Peace on Earth”, p.67, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

• A writer should not run around with a mirror for his countrymen; he should tell his society and his times things no one ever thought before.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Running, Mirrors, Should

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• Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Impossible

  Stanislaw Lem (2012). “The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy”, p.200, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Seduced, shaggy Samson snored. She scissored short. Sorely shorn, Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed, Silently scheming, Sightlessly seeking Some savage, spectacular suicide.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Suicide, Humorous, Savages

  Stanislaw Lem (2002). “The Cyberiad”, p.56, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  18 Copy quote

• Mathematics never reveals man to the degree, never expresses him in the way, that any other field of human endeavour does: the extent of the negation of man's corporeal self that mathematics achieves cannot be compared with anything. Whoever is interested in this subject I refer to my articles. Here I will say only that the world injected its patterns into human language at the very inception of that language; mathematics sleeps in every utterance, and can only be discovered, never invented.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Sleep, Men, Self

  Stanislaw Lem (1984). “His Master's Voice”, p.20, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• My pessimism (which, by the way, is far from absolute) originated with my despair in the lack of perfection to be found in human nature. I was attempting in my successive books to show the inevitable handicap of the human condition.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Book, Perfection, Despair

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• I do not like the way people use the more and more magnificent fruits of technology to their filthy deeds.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Technology, People, Fruit

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• Either something is authentic or it is unauthentic, it is either false or true, make-believe or spontaneous life; yet here we are faced with a prevaricated truth and an authentic fake, hence a thing that is at once the truth and a lie.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Lying, Believe, Fake

  Stanislaw Lem (1983). “A Perfect Vacuum”, p.64, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

  Stanislaw Lem

  Cosmos, Earth, Want

  "Solaris". Book by Stanisław Lem, translated by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox. Chapter 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72, 1970.

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• The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that Finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Lying, Age, Stronger

  "Solaris". Book by Stanisław Lem. Chapter 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 204, 1961.

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• It has no meaning, what do you use to write, the only thing that is important is: what do you write. A machine to write a book instead of a writer is not invented yet, and probably will never be.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Book, Writing, Important

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• The twentieth century had dispensed with the formal declaration of war and introduced the fifth column, sabotage, cold war, and war by proxy, but that was only the begining. Summit meetings for disarmament pursued mutual understanding and a balance of power but were also held to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy. The world of the war-or-peace alternative became a world in which war was peace and peace war.

  Stanislaw Lem

  War, Understanding, Enemy

  Stanislaw Lem (2002). “Peace on Earth”, p.59, HMH

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