Stanisław Lem citáty

strana 3

„Dokud jsem nezačal používat internet, nevěděl jsem, že je na světě tolik idiotů.“

„Dobré knihy říkají pravdu, i když jsou o věcech, které nikdy neexistovaly a nikdy existovat nebudou.“

„Strach ze smrti je nesmyslný, smrt si totiž zaslouží spíše oslavu! Může se něco vyrovnat dokonalosti neexistence? Agónie, která k ní vede, není sice příliš lákavá, ale zatím se nenašel nikdo tak zesláblý na duchu či na těle, aby ji nezvládl a nedokázal umírat až do konce.“

„Svět zotročený k dobru je stejně tak nesvobodný, jako svět zotročený ke zlu.“

„Lidská civilizace je jako loď postavená bez plánů. Tato loď nemá kormidelníka. Civilizaci chybějí znalosti, které by umožnili vědomě si zvolit jeden z mnoha možných směrů místo unášení v proudech náhodných objevů.“

„Hledáme pouze člověka. Nepotřebujeme jiné světy. Potřebujeme zrcadla. Nevíme, co si počít s jinými světy. Stačí nám jediný svět, ten náš, ale nedokážeme ho přijmout takový, jaký je. Hledáme ideální obraz našeho vlastního světa: vydáváme se hledat planetu, civilizaci nadřazenou té naší, ale vyvinutou na základě prototypu naší prapůvodní minulosti. Zároveň je v nás něco, čemu se neradi stavíme čelem, před čím se snažíme chránit, ale co přesto zůstává, protože Zemi neopouštíme ve stavu prvotní nevinnosti. Přicházíme sem takoví, jací jsme ve skutečnosti, a když se obrátí karta a tato skutečnost se nám odhalí - ta část naší reality, kterou bychom nejraději přešli mlčením -, pak už se nám to nelíbí.“

„Filozofie chce odpovědět na všechny otázky jako nějaký bůh.“

“Tarkovsky reminds me of a sergeant from the time of Turgenev — he is very pleasant and extremely prepossessing and at the same time visionary and elusive. One cannot "catch" him anywhere because he is always at a slightly different place already. This is simply the type of person he is. When I understood that I stopped bothering. This director cannot be reshaped anymore, and first of all one cannot convince him of anything as he is going to recast everything in his "own way" no matter what.”

“In an extreme instance, in which there is a Propervirt of less than 0.9%, the TEXT OF THE PRESENT PROSPECTUS may likewise undergo an ABRUPT change. If, while you are reading these sentences, the words begin to jump about, and the letters quiver and blur, please interrupt your reading for ten or twenty seconds to wipe your glasses, adjust your clothing, or the like, and then start reading AGAIN from the beginning, and NOT JUST from the place where your reading was interrupted, since such a TRANSFORMATION indicates that a correction of DEFICIENCIES is now taking place.”

“Really, one of us ought to have the courage to call the experiment off and shoulder the responsibility for the decision, but the majority reckons that that kind of courage would be a sign of cowardice, and the first step in a retreat. They think it would mean an undignified surrender for mankind — as if there was any dignity in floundering and drowning in what we don't understand and never will.”

“I have to make it clear, however, that I haven't seen the whole film except for 20 minutes of the second part although I know the screenplay very well because Russians have a custom of making an extra copy for the author.”

“A man who for an entire week does nothing but hit himself over the head has little reason to be proud.”

“If the methods you employ are good, then what’s the point of all this reasoning and argument? A few drops of credendium, a single squirt in the eyes, and I applaud your every word with enthusiasm, you have my full approval, my esteem. If those methods are good. Yet apparently you yourself are not convinced of their worth, preferring simple, old-fashioned hot air and rhetoric, wasting words on me instead of reaching for the atomizer! Apparently you’re well aware that the triumph of psychem is a sham, and that you will be standing on the field alone, a conqueror with a bad case of heartburn.”

“"The year is 2098", he said, "with 69 billion inhabitants legally registered and approximately another 26 billion in hiding. The average annual temperature has fallen four degrees. In fifteen or twenty years there will be glaciers here. We have no way of averting or halting their advance - we can only keep them secret."
"I always thought there would be ice in hell," I said. "And so you paint the gates with pretty pictures?"”

“If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.”

“Fewer are the ways of helping people than of harming them; it is the nature of things, not a consequence of the statistical method. Our world does not stand halfway between heaven and hell; it seems much closer to hell.”

“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.”

“It is not good for a man to be too cognizant of his physical and spiritual mechanisms. Complete knowledge reveals limits to human possibilities, and the less a man is by nature limited in his purposes, the less he can tolerate limits.”

“Each civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into Something Fathomable.”

“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.”