There are friends with whom we share neither interests nor any particular experiences, friends with whom we never correspond, whom we seldom meet and then only by chance, but whose existence nonetheless has for us a special if uncanny meaning. For me the Eiffel Tower is just such a friend, and not merely because it happens to be the symbol of a city, for Paris leaves me neither hot nor cold. I first became aware of this attachment of mine when reading in the paper about plans for its demolition, the mere thought of which filled me with alarm.
Stanislaw LemMathematics 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 LemMy 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 LemPsychoanalysis provides truth in an infantile, that is, a schoolboy fashion: we learn from it, roughly and hurriedly, things that scandalize us and thereby command our attention. It sometimes happens, and such is the case here, that a simplification touching upon the truth, but cheaply, is of no more value than a lie. Once again we are shown the demon and the angel, the beast and the god locked in Manichean embrace, and once again man has been pronounced, by himself, not culpable.
Stanislaw LemEven 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 LemPlentitude, when too plentitudinous, was worst than destitution, for obviously what could one do, if there was nothing one could not?
Stanislaw LemThe 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 LemWhat 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.
Stanislaw LemBurn with that consuming fire of objectivity that forces a man to renew efforts that are doomed to failure.
Stanislaw LemA candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other.
Stanislaw LemWe don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos.
Stanislaw LemI felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained.
Stanislaw LemSo one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? 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.
Stanislaw Lem...it is easy not to believe in monsters, considerably more difficult to escape their dread and loathsome clutches.
Stanislaw LemEither 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 LemThe horse respects and obeys man because its large eyes magnify everything, so man appears much larger than the horse itself.
Stanislaw LemThat 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...
Stanislaw LemMan'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 LemFor moral reasons I am an atheist - for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally.
Stanislaw LemEach civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into Something Fathomable.
Stanislaw LemI never loved totalitarianism and all the ideas of making mankind happy always seemed crazy to me.
Stanislaw LemOur ability to adapt and therefore to accept everything is one of our greatest dangers. Creatures that are completely flexible, changeable, can have no fixed morality.
Stanislaw LemNothing, my dear and clever colleague, is not your run-of-the-mill nothing, the result of idleness and inactivity, but dynamic, aggressive Nothingness, that is to say, perfect, unique, ubiquitous, in other words Nonexistence, ultimate and supreme.
Stanislaw LemI don't resist progress, but I have a growing feeling that mankind uses it mostly for disgraceful purposes.
Stanislaw LemThe 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 LemAnd yet we knew, for a certainty, that when first emissaries of Earth went walking among the planets, Earth's other sons would be dreaming not about such expeditions but about a piece of bread.
Stanislaw LemMan does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him.
Stanislaw LemWe 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.
Stanislaw LemA 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 LemThe night stared me in the face, amorphous, blind, infinite, without frontiers. Not a single start relieved the darkness behind the glass.
Stanislaw LemReally, one of us ought to have the courage to call the experiment off and shoulder the responsibility for the decision, but the majority reckons that that kind of courage would be a sign of cowardice, and the first step in a retreat. They think it would mean an undignified surrender for mankind as if there was any dignity in floundering and drowning in what we don't understand and never will.
Stanislaw LemScience 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.
Stanislaw Lem