And 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 Lem More Quotes by Stanislaw Lem More Quotes From Stanislaw Lem So 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 love men order I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained. Stanislaw Lem emptiness felt My 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 Lem despair perfection book I don't resist progress, but I have a growing feeling that mankind uses it mostly for disgraceful purposes. Stanislaw Lem progress purpose feelings Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom. Stanislaw Lem genius awareness light You believe by doubting and you doubt by believing; yet this state too is not the final one. Stanislaw Lem finals doubt believe There are no answers, only choices. Stanislaw Lem choices answers Have it compose a poem -- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s! Stanislaw Lem heroism six faces If a man who can’t count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky? Stanislaw Lem gambling men philosophy A man who for an entire week does nothing but hit himself over the head has little reason to be proud. Stanislaw Lem proud doe men Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness. Stanislaw Lem trust greatness business I do not like the way people use the more and more magnificent fruits of technology to their filthy deeds. Stanislaw Lem fruit technology people The only writers who have any peace are the ones who don't write. And there are some like that. They wallow in a sea of possibilities. To express a thought, you first have to limit it, and that means kill it. Every word I speak robs me of a thousand others, and every line I write means giving up another. Stanislaw Lem giving-up writing mean A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other. Stanislaw Lem get-money rich vote Not only does God play dice with the world He does not let us see what He has rolled. Stanislaw Lem doe play world Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child. Stanislaw Lem term behavior children People make filthy things with the freedom they regained. Stanislaw Lem filthy people For some time there was a widely held notion (zealously fostered by the daily press) to the effect that the 'thinking ocean' of Solaris was a gigantic brain, prodigiously well-developed and several million years in advance of our own civilization, a sort of 'cosmic yogi', a sage, a symbol of omniscience, which had long ago understood the vanity of all action and for this reason had retreated into an unbreakable silence. Stanislaw Lem vanity ocean thinking Futurologists have been multiplying like flies since the day Herman Kahn made Cassandra's profession "scientific," yet somehow not one of them has come out with the clear statement that we have wholly abandoned ourselves to the mercy of technological progress. The roles are now reversed: humanity becomes, for technology, a means, an instrument for achieving a goal unknown and unknowable. Stanislaw Lem technology goal mean ...it is easy not to believe in monsters, considerably more difficult to escape their dread and loathsome clutches. Stanislaw Lem easy monsters believe
