Stanisław Lem quotes - page 2

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. (Stanisław Lem)
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. View quote
Stanisław Lem
A man who for an entire week does nothing but hit himself over the head has little reason to be proud. View quote
Stanisław Lem
The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that Finis vitae sed non amoris [Life ends but not love], is a lie, useless and not even funny. View quote
Stanisław Lem
Science is turning into a monastery for the Order of Capitulant Friars. Logical calculus is supposed to supersede man as moralist. We submit to the blackmail of the "superior knowledge" that has the temerity to assert that nuclear war can be, by derivation, a good thing, because this follows from simple arithmetic. View quote
Stanisław Lem
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. View quote
Stanisław Lem
No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets. View quote
Stanisław Lem
Faith as well as science endowed the visible world with properties that eliminated blind, incalculable chance as the author of all events. The war of good and evil present in all religions does not always end, in every faith, with the victory of good, but in every one it establishes a clear order of existence. The sacred as well as the profane rests on that universal order... View quote
Stanisław Lem
It is no coincidence, I am sure, that those who have the most to say about the Project are the ones who have had no direct contact with it. Which is similar to the attitude physicists have regarding gravitation or electrons - as opposed to that of the "well-informed" who read popular science. The "well-informed" think they know something about matters that the experts are reluctant to even to speak of. Information at second hand always gives an impression of tidiness, in contrast with the data at the scientist's disposal, full of gaps and uncertainties. View quote
Stanisław Lem
You are only a puppet. But you don't realize that you are. View quote
Stanisław Lem
One day Trurl the constructor put together a machine that could build anything beginning with the letter 'n. (Stanisław Lem)
I have to make it clear, however, that I haven't seen the whole film except for 20 minutes of the second part although I know the screenplay very well because Russians have a custom of making an extra copy for the author. View quote
Stanisław Lem
If the methods you employ are good, then what's the point of all this reasoning and argument? A few drops of credendium, a single squirt in the eyes, and I applaud your every word with enthusiasm, you have my full approval, my esteem. If those methods are good. Yet apparently you yourself are not convinced of their worth, preferring simple, old-fashioned hot air and rhetoric, wasting words on me instead of reaching for the atomizer! Apparently you're well aware that the triumph of psychem is a sham, and that you will be standing on the field alone, a conqueror with a bad case of heartburn. View quote
Stanisław Lem
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. View quote
Stanisław Lem
My Kelvin decides to stay on the planet without any hope whatsoever while Tarkovsky created an image where some kind of an island appears, and on that island a hut. And when I hear about the hut and the island I'm beside myself with irritation... This is just some emotional sauce into which Tarkovsky has submerged his heroes, not to mention that he has completely amputated the scientific landscape and in its place introduced so much of the weirdness I cannot stand. [...]. View quote
Stanisław Lem
Any attempt to understand the motivation of these occurrences is blocked by our own anthropomorphism. Where there are no men, there cannot be motives accessible to men. View quote
Stanisław Lem
The ancients used to say: mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur - the world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived. View quote
Stanisław Lem
And do you believe in God?" "I do." "But you didn't think a robot would, right? View quote
Stanisław Lem
How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can't even understand one another? View quote
Stanisław Lem
A smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it. View quote
Stanisław Lem
If a man who can't count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky? (Stanisław Lem)
He is no parasite on anything, whose work is real: a mechanic, a doctor, a builder, a tailor, a dishwasher. What, in comparison, does a writer produce? Semblances. This is a serious occupation? View quote
Stanisław Lem
He who must be what he is, may curse his fate, but cannot change it; on the other hand, he who can transform himself has no one in the world but himself to blame for his failings, no one but himself to hold responsible for his dissatisfaction. View quote
Stanisław Lem
That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox... View quote
Stanisław Lem
It turns out, however, that freedom of expression sometimes presents a greater threat to an idea, because forbidden thoughts may circulate in secret, but what can be done when an important fact is lost in a flood of impostors, and the voice of truth is drowned out by an ungodly din? When that voice, though freely resounding, cannot be heard because the technologies of information have led to a situation in which one can receive best the message of him who shouts the loudest, even when the most falsely? View quote
Stanisław Lem