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For what are myths if not the imposing of order on phenomena that do not possess order in themselves? And all myths, however they differ from philosophical systems and scientific theories, share this with them, that they negate the principle of randomness in the world.

Stanislaw Lem

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Stanislaw Lem
Age: 84 †
Born: 1921
Born: September 12
Died: 2006
Died: March 27
Essayist
Futurist
Philosopher
Physician
Playwright
Poet
Researcher
Satirist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Lemberg
Austria
Stanislaw Lem
Lem
Stanislav Lem
Stanislas Lem
World
Scientific
Differ
Philosophical
Imposing
Principle
Myths
However
Phenomena
Theory
Theories
Principles
Possess
Share
Systems
Negate
Order
Myth
Randomness

More quotes by Stanislaw Lem

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Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him.
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I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.
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I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained.
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To torture a man you have to know his pleasures.
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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.
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Science is turning into a monastery for the Order of Capitulant Friars. Logical calculus is supposed to supersede man as moralist. We submit to the blackmail of the 'superior knowledge' that has the temerity to assert that nuclear war can be, by derivation, a good thing, because this follows from simple arithmetic.
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If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.
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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.
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No one reads if someone does read, he doesn't understand if he understands, he immediately forgets.
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What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?' 'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.
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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
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Burn with that consuming fire of objectivity that forces a man to renew efforts that are doomed to failure.
Stanislaw Lem
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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
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Plentitude, when too plentitudinous, was worst than destitution, for obviously what could one do, if there was nothing one could not?
Stanislaw Lem
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Psychoanalytic doctrine reveals the pig in man, a pig saddled with a conscience the disastrous result is that the pig is uncomfortable beneath that pious rider, and the rider fares no better in the situation, since his endeavor is not only to tame the pig, but also to render it invisible.
Stanislaw Lem
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Come, every frustum longs to be a cone, And every vector dreams of matrices. Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze: It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
Stanislaw Lem
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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.
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You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down.
Stanislaw Lem
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Have it compose a poem -- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!
Stanislaw Lem
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Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.
Stanislaw Lem