Stanislaw Lem Quotes

A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.

There are no answers, only choices.

I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.

Science explains the world, but only Art can reconcile us to it.

Cannibals prefer those who have no spines.

Our ability to adapt and therefore to accept everything is one of our greatest dangers. Creatures that are completely flexible, changeable, can have no fixed morality.

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.

A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other.

You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down.

A specialist is a barbarian whose ignorance is not well-rounded.

For moral reasons I am an atheist - for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally.

He who has had, has been, but he who hasn't been, has been had.

Not only does God play dice with the world He does not let us see what He has rolled.

A smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it.

If a man who can’t count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky?

Art gives man a reminder that he is not just a consumer but a creator as well. It awakens in him the urge to struggle and perform great deeds; it fills him with the craving to pass on the Promethean fire to generations to come.

Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom.

No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets.

I don't resist progress, but I have a growing feeling that mankind uses it mostly for disgraceful purposes.

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.

Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness.

Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.

Behind every glorious facade there is always hidden something ugly.

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.

Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way