Quotes by Stanisław Lem

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It is a commendable gift of evolution (...) that human pains, fears, and sufferings disappear with personal death, nothing remains of the ups and downs, pleasures and torments. If only a single atom remained from the feelings of every unhappy, tormented person, if the inheritance of generations could increase in this way, if a single spark could jump from person to person, the world would be filled with gut-wrenching screams.

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Good books always tell the truth, even if they describe something that never happened and never will happen.

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It is not necessary to reshape what we are looking at, but to choose a different point of view.

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At an ever-accelerating pace, they are getting mixed up in the world's power elite. Unfortunately, not everyone gets such a fatal fate, which I wish from the bottom of my heart for all of them.

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Culture is largely degraded and regressed, because the ever-increasing and increasingly advanced satellite transmitters bombard people with an ever-increasing amount of entertaining, banal, adventurous, stupid, dull, always easily digestible, not particularly diverse junk, they deliver endlessly simplified patterns everywhere, they stifle individual thinking, not only in clothing and customs, but also in behavioral norms and artificial ideals that are desirable and to be followed.

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We could learn from the natural evolution of life, because it is smarter than us, namely smarter because it has had about three thousand times more time to learn than we, the young human race, which is barely one million years old.

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The most useful prediction is the one that benefits its maker: that is, the wrong but useful prediction.

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What is outside the tenure of each government and the ambition of its politicians is irrelevant, as is what is beyond the biological line of sight of the still-active generation.

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War is the worst way to learn about a foreign culture.

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Evolution often endows completely innocent creatures with hideous appearances.

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Our days are numbered. Statisticians are hard workers.

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My poor friend, you say, "After me is the flood!" - but you only pull the toilet chain.

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I am an atheist on moral grounds - on moral grounds. My opinion is that we know a creator by his creation, and I think the world is so pitifully put together that I would rather believe that no one did it than believe that someone did it on purpose.

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Space and time shrink, Once I start. What others have already given up on is just the beginning for me.

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The past cannot be denied. We cannot eliminate from it what is foreign to us either.

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Give a man everything he wants, and you make him unhappy!

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Knowing the history of science, there cannot be (...) a perfect safeguard that prevents abuse. After all, all techniques are perfectly neutral, but we were able to give them all the same goal: death.

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Humanity always feels most at home (though not comfortably) when the situation is at least a little hopeless.

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Whoever generalizes correctly can master an ever-increasing range of phenomena.

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Most people believe that there is no flattery that we wouldn't take for cash. If this is a rule, then I am an exception, because I have never liked praise. Praising, so to speak, can only be from the top down, but not from the bottom up, and I myself know exactly how much I'm worth.

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Genius is primarily a perpetual doubt.

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Consciously cowardly (...) can only be a person whose courage does not usually fail. A shy, insecure person does not dare to reveal his main quality so openly, as if to confirm his main quality even in front of himself.

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The language is wiser than the mind of any of us, just as the body of each individual is wiser than the mind, which does its multifaceted work called life process by itself.

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Man, despite appearances, does not create goals for himself. He is born into an age that sets him ready goals, he can serve them or rebel against them, but the object of service or rebellion is given from without. In order for him to know the complete freedom of seeking his goals, he would have to be alone, and this cannot be done, because if he is not brought up among people, he cannot become a man.

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I don't believe anyone, so I don't need anyone to believe me either.

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Every sentence in a book means something, even if it is torn out of the text, but in its place it is intertwined with the meaning of the other sentences, the previous and the following ones. From this percolation, coalescing and accumulation, a thought that is immobile in time is finally created: the work.

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Our concerns are vague, almost innocent, until we articulate them clearly.

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Nothing in nature is simple.

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Cannibals prefer those with no backbone.