Quotes from book
Solaris
Solaris is a 1961 philosophical science fiction novel by Polish writer Stanisław Lem. Its central theme is the complete failure of human beings to understand an extraterrestrial intelligence.
“You are only a puppet. But you don't realize that you are.”
Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 9: "The Liquid Oxygen", p. 134
Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 204 [elipsis in original]
Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 12: "The Dreams", p. 185 [elipsis in original]
“Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.”
Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 199
“If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.”
Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 12: "The Dreams", p. 184
Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72
Context: We are only seeking Man. 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. We are seaching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilisation superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don't like it any more.
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.
Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72
Context: We are only seeking Man. 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. We are seaching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilisation superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don't like it any more.
