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. 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 lovemenorder I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained. Stanislaw Lem emptinessfelt 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 despairperfectionbook I don't resist progress, but I have a growing feeling that mankind uses it mostly for disgraceful purposes. Stanislaw Lem progresspurposefeelings Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom. Stanislaw Lem geniusawarenesslight You believe by doubting and you doubt by believing; yet this state too is not the final one. Stanislaw Lem finalsdoubtbelieve There are no answers, only choices. Stanislaw Lem choicesanswers 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 heroismsixfaces If a man who can’t count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky? Stanislaw Lem gamblingmenphilosophy A man who for an entire week does nothing but hit himself over the head has little reason to be proud. Stanislaw Lem prouddoemen Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness. Stanislaw Lem trustgreatnessbusiness 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 would-bedreamson I do not like the way people use the more and more magnificent fruits of technology to their filthy deeds. Stanislaw Lem fruittechnologypeople 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-upwritingmean 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-moneyrichvote Not only does God play dice with the world He does not let us see what He has rolled. Stanislaw Lem doeplayworld Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child. Stanislaw Lem termbehaviorchildren People make filthy things with the freedom they regained. Stanislaw Lem filthypeople 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 vanityoceanthinking 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 technologygoalmean
