Stanisław Lem: Evening

“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.”

Stanisław Lem

"Pirx's Tale" in More Tales of Pirx The Pilot (1983)
Context: Oh, I read good books, too, but only Earthside. Why that is, I don't really know. Never stopped to analyze it. 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. When they talk about outer space, they make you feel the silence, so unlike the Earthly kind — and the lifelessness. Whatever the adventures, the message is always the same: humans will never feel at home out there.

Truth , Books , Way

“How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another?”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris

Communication , Understanding

“I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 204 (final lines)
Context: I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.

Faith , Time , Past

“Like it or not, we have placed our destiny in the hands of the experts. A politician is, after all, a kind of expert, if self-styled. Even the fact that competent experts must serve under politicians of mediocre intelligence and little foresight is a problem that we are stuck with, because the experts themselves cannot agree on any major world issue.”

Stanisław Lem

One Human Minute (1986)
Context: The book does not contain “everything about the human being,” because that is impossible. The largest libraries in the world do not contain “everything.” The quantity of anthropological data discovered by scientists now exceeds any individual’s ability to assimilate it. The division of labor, including intellectual labor, begun thirty thousand years ago in the Paleolithic, has become an irreversible phenomenon, and there is nothing that can be done about it. Like it or not, we have placed our destiny in the hands of the experts. A politician is, after all, a kind of expert, if self-styled. Even the fact that competent experts must serve under politicians of mediocre intelligence and little foresight is a problem that we are stuck with, because the experts themselves cannot agree on any major world issue. A logocracy of quarreling experts might be no better than the rule of the mediocrities to which we are subject. The declining intellectual quality of political leadership is the result of the growing complexity of the world. Since no one, be he endowed with the highest wisdom, can grasp it in its entirety, it is those who are least bothered by this who strive for power.

World , Intelligence , Problem

“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

“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 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.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 204