Quote

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.

Stanislaw Lem

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Gone
Findings
Explored
Lying
Finding
Civilizations
Without
Lies
Doorways
Men
Civilization
Labyrinth
World
Behinds
Chamber
Behind
Passages
Secret
Explore
Chambers
Dark
Worlds
Sealed

More quotes by Stanislaw Lem

Image
I had no hope. Yet expectation lived on in me, the last thing she had left behind. What further consummations, mockeries, torments did I still anticipate? I had no idea as I abided in the unshaken belief that the time of cruel wonders was not yet over.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
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. The sacred as well as the profane rests on that universal order.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
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
Image
Behind every glorious facade there is always hidden something ugly.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
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.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
To torture a man you have to know his pleasures.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
I don't resist progress, but I have a growing feeling that mankind uses it mostly for disgraceful purposes.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
Cannibals prefer those who have no spines.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
If a man who can’t count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky?
Stanislaw Lem
Image
Plentitude, when too plentitudinous, was worst than destitution, for obviously what could one do, if there was nothing one could not?
Stanislaw Lem
Image
Nothing, my dear and clever colleague, is not your run-of-the-mill nothing, the result of idleness and inactivity, but dynamic, aggressive Nothingness, that is to say, perfect, unique, ubiquitous, in other words Nonexistence, ultimate and supreme.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
I see a poem as a multi-coloured strip behind peeling plaster, in separate, shining fragments.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
...it is easy not to believe in monsters, considerably more difficult to escape their dread and loathsome clutches.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is only one positive role of the Nobel prize--it creates some common way to understand a writer. I cannot say, that I like this situation, but that's the way it goes. The books are being born and then walk around the world, just as children do.
Stanislaw Lem