Stanisław Lem

“We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so,…

— Stanisław Lem

“It might hear us. But what's its name? We have named all the stars and all the planets, even though they might…

— Stanisław Lem

“We came here as we truly are, and when the other side shows us that truth—the part of it we pass over…

— Stanisław Lem

“It's true that even though I'm a world unto myself, I've just a speck of dust in the avalanche of events. But…

— Stanisław Lem

“maybe he fought it off and forgot about it, and he wasn’t afraid, because he knew he’d never carry it out. Right,…

— Stanisław Lem

“The human mind is only capable of absorbing a few things at a time. We see what is taking place in front…

— Stanisław Lem

“I don't think anything can behave as unintelligently as intelligence.”

— Stanisław Lem

“Not that this deterred him and his friend Klapaucius from further experimentation, which showed that the extent of a dragon's existence depends…

— Stanisław Lem

“A man craves ultimate truths. Every mortal mind, I think, is that way. But what is ultimate truth? It's the end of…

— Stanisław Lem

“Was it possible for thought to exist without consciousness?”

— Stanisław Lem

“Evolution is, as an engineer, an opportunist, not a perfectionist.”

— Stanisław Lem

“I didn’t believe for a minute that this liquid colossus, which had brought about the death of hundreds of humans within itself,…

— Stanisław Lem

“Such labor follows in the steps of Freud, who has become the Ptolemy of psychology, for now, with him, anyone can explain…

— Stanisław Lem

“One of the most incredible secrets of science fiction (although one not too closely guarded) is the fact that 99 percent of…

— Stanisław Lem

“Ants that encounter in their path a dead philosopher may make good use of him.”

— Stanisław Lem

“Physics, my friend, is a narrow path drawn across a gulf that the human imagination cannot grasp. It is a set of…

— Stanisław Lem

“Everyone knows that dragons don’t exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific…

— Stanisław Lem

“In the past an artist produced things that were necessary socially; they were instruments, albeit of a special kind, that helped the…

— Stanisław Lem

“A human being, appearances to the contrary, doesn’t create his own purposes. These are imposed by the time he’s born into; he…

— Stanisław Lem

“But the worst of it was, all the third-rate poets emerged unscathed; being third-rate, they didn't know good poetry from bad and…

— Stanisław Lem

“Matter vomited forth everything she could.”

— Stanisław Lem

“Anyhow, the criterion of common sense was never applicable to the history of the human race. Averroës, Kant, Socrates, Newton, Voltaire, could…

— Stanisław Lem

“contact, the goal for which we are striving, is as vague and obscure as communion with the saints or the coming of…

— Stanisław Lem

“From strawberries under torture one may extract all sorts of things.”

— Stanisław Lem

“Science does not concern itself with those properties of existence to which ridiculousness belongs. Science explains the world, but only Art can…

— Stanisław Lem