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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.

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

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I see a poem as a multi-coloured strip behind peeling plaster, in separate, shining fragments.
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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.
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Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.
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...it is easy not to believe in monsters, considerably more difficult to escape their dread and loathsome clutches.
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To torture a man you have to know his pleasures.
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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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Skepticism is like a microscope whose magnification is constantly increased: the sharp image that one begins with finally dissolves, because it is not possible to see ultimate things: their existence is only to be inferred.
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Is a mountain only a huge stone? Is a planet an enormous mountain?
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The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes.
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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.
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A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.
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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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Solaristics, wrote Muntius, is a substitute for religion in the space age. It is faith wrapped in the cloak of science contact, the goal for which we are striving, is as vague and obscure as communion with the saints or the coming of the Messiah.
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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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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.
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There are no answers, only choices.
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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.
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The demand for absolute purity of genres is becoming nowadays an anachronism in literature.
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The night stared me in the face, amorphous, blind, infinite, without frontiers. Not a single start relieved the darkness behind the glass.
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I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained.
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