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To torture a man you have to know his pleasures.

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
Pleasures
Torture
Pleasure
Men

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You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down.
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Is a mountain only a huge stone? Is a planet an enormous mountain?
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Even a fool could see that one didn't need a war, nuclear or otherwise, to destroy oneself the rising cost of weaponry could do that quite nicely.
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A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other.
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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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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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Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him.
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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.
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That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...
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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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If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.
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We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us but we can't accept it for what it is.
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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?
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Burn with that consuming fire of objectivity that forces a man to renew efforts that are doomed to failure.
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I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained.
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Behind every glorious facade there is always hidden something ugly.
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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!
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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.
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Where do consequences lead? Depends on the escort.
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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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