Stanisław Lem: Trending quotes (page 2)

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

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72

“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.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris

God , Imagination , Idea , Passion

“When smashing monuments, save the pedestals. They always come in handy.”

Stanisław Lem

“I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained.”

Stanisław Lem

Source: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem | Summary & Study Guide

“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.”

Stanisław Lem

From Peter Engel, "An Interview With Stanislaw Lem": The Missouri Review, Volume VII, Number 2 (1984) http://www.missourireview.org/index.php?genre=Interviews&title=An+Interview+with+Stanislaw+Lem
Context: For 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.

Pain , World , Way , Appearance

“We’re not searching for anything except people. We don’t need other worlds. We need mirrors.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris

People , World , Search

“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.”

Stanisław Lem

Time

“No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets.”

Stanisław Lem

Understanding , Reading , Forgetting

“But what am I going to see?

I don't know. In a certain sense, it depends on you.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris

Sense , Dependency

“Plenitude, when too plenitudinous, was worse than destitution, for — obviously — what could one do, if there was nothing one could not?”

Stanisław Lem book The Cyberiad

In "Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius", §4
The Cyberiad (1967)

“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. […]”

Stanisław Lem

On Solaris screening (1972)

Hope , Appearance

“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…”

Stanisław Lem

One Human Minute (1986)

War , World , Faith , Religion

“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 book Peace on Earth

Peace on Earth (1987), tr. Elinor Ford (1994) from Pokój na Ziemi, Ch. 1

War , Fools

“He who has had, has been, but he who hasn't been, has been had.”

Stanisław Lem book The Cyberiad

In "Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius", §2
The Cyberiad (1967)

“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.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 9: "The Liquid Oxygen", p. 134

Men , Motivation , Understanding

“The fate of a single man can be rich with significance, that of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate sense of the word.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 8 "The Monsters", p. 120

Men , Fate , History , Sense

“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.”

Stanisław Lem book His Master's Voice

Source: His Master's Voice (1968), Ch. 1

Thinking , Science , Reading

“The ancients used to say: mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur — the world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived.”

Stanisław Lem book Szempillantás

Starożytni mawiali: 'mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur'.
Świat łaknie oszustw, więc jest oszukiwany.
"A Blink of an Eye", Okamgnienie (2000); the phrase "Mundus Vult Decipi" was used as a motto by the American satirist James Branch Cabell and is said to have originated with Petronius.

World

“And do you believe in God?"
"I do."
"But you didn't think a robot would, right?”

Stanisław Lem

"Right."
"The Inquest" in More Tales of Pirx the Pilot (1983)

God , Thinking

“I have fundamental reservations to this adaptation. First of all I would have liked to see the planet Solaris which the director unfortunately denied me as the film was to be a cinematically subdued work. And secondly — as I told Tarkovsky during one of our quarrels — he didn't make Solaris at all, he made Crime and Punishment. What we get in the film is only how this abominable Kelvin has driven poor Harey to suicide and then he has pangs of conscience which are amplified by her appearance; a strange and incomprehensible appearance. […]”

Stanisław Lem

On Solaris screening (1972)

Suicide , Appearance