He was a Polish writer of science fiction, philosophy and satire. He was named a Knight of the Order of the White Eagle. His books have been translated into 41 languages and have sold over 27 million copies. He is perhaps best known as the author of the 1961 novel Solaris, which has been made into a feature film three times. In 1976 Theodore Sturgeon said that Lem was the most widely read science-fiction writer in the world. His works explore philosophical themes; speculation on technology, the nature of intelligence, the impossibility of mutual communication and understanding, despair about human limitations and humankind’s place in the universe. They are sometimes presented as fiction, but others are in the form of essays or philosophical books.
(1921 – 2006)
– Stanislaw Lem Quotes –
You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down.
~ Stanislaw Lem
Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness.
~ Stanislaw Lem
The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that Finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny.
~ Stanislaw Lem
We don’t want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos.
~ Stanislaw Lem
Where do consequences lead? Depends on the escort.
~ Stanislaw Lem
A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.
~ Stanislaw Lem
The fate of a single man can be rich with significance, that of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate sense of the word.
~ Stanislaw Lem
Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him.
~ Stanislaw Lem
Any attempt to understand the motivation of these occurrences is blocked by our own anthropomorphism. Where there are no men, there cannot be motives accessible to men.
~ Stanislaw Lem
We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence then we don’t like it any more.
~ Stanislaw Lem
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.
~ Stanislaw Lem
To torture a man you have to know his pleasures.
~ Stanislaw Lem
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.
~ Stanislaw Lem
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.
~ Stanislaw Lem
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
The war of good and evil present in all religions does not always end, in every faith, with the victory of good, but in every one it establishes a clear order of existence.
~ Stanislaw Lem
Either something is authentic or it is unauthentic, it is either false or true, make-believe or spontaneous life; yet here we are faced with a prevaricated truth and an authentic fake, hence a thing that is at once the truth and a lie.
~ Stanislaw Lem
Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.
~ Stanislaw Lem
