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Stanisław Lem citations
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Stanisław Lem , aussi francisé en Stanislas Lem, né le 12 septembre 1921 à Lviv et mort le 27 mars 2006 à Cracovie, en Pologne, est un écrivain de science-fiction polonais. Son œuvre, traduite en quarante langues, caractérisée par l’étendue de sa palette, est construite autour d’une vision critique du comportement humain. Stanisław Lem est également l’un des écrivains polonais les plus traduits aux côtés de Witold Gombrowicz et Henryk Sienkiewicz. Solaris est sans doute son roman le plus célèbre et a été porté au cinéma par Andreï Tarkovski en 1972 puis par Steven Soderbergh en 2002. Certains de ses romans mêlent récit d’anticipation et intrigue policière, notamment dans Le Rhume . Wikipedia  

✵ 12. septembre 1921 – 27. mars 2006
Stanisław Lem photo
Stanisław Lem: 75 citations0 J'aime

Stanisław Lem Citations

“L'homme n'est capable de maîtriser que ce qu'il peut concevoir. D'autre part, il ne peut concevoir que ce qu'il est possible d'exprimer; tout ce qui est inexprimable est également inconcevable. En explorant les étapes successives de l'évolution d'une langue, nous arrivons à anticiper les découvertes, transformations et révolutions de mœurs dont celle-ci pourrait être un jour le reflet.”

Stanisław Lem

Stanisław Lem: Citations en anglais

“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. […]”

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Stanisław Lem

On Solaris screening (1972)

“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…”

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Stanisław Lem

One Human Minute (1986)

“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.”

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Stanisław Lem livre Peace on Earth

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

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

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Stanisław Lem livre 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.”

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Stanisław Lem livre Solaris

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

“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.”

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Stanisław Lem livre Solaris

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

“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.”

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Stanisław Lem livre His Master's Voice

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

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

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Stanisław Lem livre 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.

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

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Stanisław Lem

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

“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. […]”

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Stanisław Lem

On Solaris screening (1972)

“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?”

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Stanisław Lem

"Rien du tout, ou la conséquence" ("Nothing, or the Consequence"), in A Perfect Vacuum (1971), tr. Michael Kandel (1978)

“You are only a puppet. But you don't realize that you are.”

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Stanisław Lem livre Solaris

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

“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.”

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Stanisław Lem livre The Cyberiad

In "Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius", §3
The Cyberiad (1967)

“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.”

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Stanisław Lem livre Solaris

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

“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…”

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Stanisław Lem livre Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 204 [elipsis in original]

“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 beginning. 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.”

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Stanisław Lem livre Peace on Earth

Peace on Earth (1987), tr. Elinor Ford (1994) from Pokój na Ziemi, Ch. 2

“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.”

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Stanisław Lem livre His Master's Voice

Source: His Master's Voice (1968), Ch. 9

“The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes.”

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Stanisław Lem livre The Star Diaries

The Star Diaries (1976)

“Just you think, in a rocket a man takes the risk of bursting like a balloon, or freezing, or roasting, or sweating all his blood out in a single gush, before he can even cry out, and all that remains is bits of bone floating inside armored hulls, in accordance with the laws of Newton as corrected by Einstein, those two milestones in our progress. Down the road we go, all in good faith and see where it gets us. Think about our success Kelvin; think about our cabins, the unbreakable plates, the immortal sinks, legions of faithful wardobes devoted cupboards…”

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Stanisław Lem livre Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 12: "The Dreams", p. 185 [elipsis in original]

“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?”

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Stanisław Lem livre His Master's Voice

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

“Skepticism is like a microscope whose magnification is constantly increased: the sharp image that one begins with finally dissolves, because it is not possible to see ultimate things: their existence is only to be inferred.”

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Stanisław Lem livre His Master's Voice

Source: His Master's Voice (1968), Ch. 17

“Take a good look at this world, how riddled it is with huge, gaping holes, how full of Nothingness, the Nothingness that fills the bottomless void between the stars, how everything about us has become lined with it, how it darkly lurks behind each shred of matter. This is your work, envious one! And I hardly think the future generations will bless you for it…”

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Stanisław Lem livre The Cyberiad

In "How The World Was Saved"
The Cyberiad (1967)

“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.”

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Stanisław Lem livre His Master's Voice

Source: His Master's Voice (1968), Ch. 2

“Psychoanalysis 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.”

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Stanisław Lem livre His Master's Voice

Preface
His Master's Voice (1968)

“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.”

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Stanisław Lem

"Gruppenführer Louis XVI", in A Perfect Vacuum (1971), tr. Michael Kandel (1978)

“Not everything everywhere is for us.”

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Stanisław Lem livre The Invincible

The Invincible (1963)

“Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.”

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Stanisław Lem livre Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 199

“The whole sphere of cognitive and epistemological considerations was extremely important in my book and it was tightly coupled to the solaristic literature and to the essence of solaristics as such. Unfortunately, the film has been robbed of those qualities rather thoroughly. […]”

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Stanisław Lem

On Solaris screening (1972)

“One day Trurl the constructor put together a machine that could build anything beginning with the letter 'n.”

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Stanisław Lem livre The Cyberiad

In "How The World Was Saved"
The Cyberiad (1967)

“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.”

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Stanisław Lem livre Peace on Earth

Peace on Earth (1987), tr. Elinor Ford (1994) from Pokój na Ziemi, Ch. 4

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