Quote

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

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
Purpose
Tolerate
Less
Possibilities
Spiritual
Limited
Nature
Complete
Cognizant
Human
Limits
Mechanisms
Humans
Physical
Reveals
Good
Possibility
Purposes
Men
Knowledge
Mechanism

More quotes by Stanislaw Lem

Image
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
Image
You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
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.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
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
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
The only writers who have any peace are the ones who don't write. And there are some like that. They wallow in a sea of possibilities. To express a thought, you first have to limit it, and that means kill it. Every word I speak robs me of a thousand others, and every line I write means giving up another.
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 felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
No one reads if someone does read, he doesn't understand if he understands, he immediately forgets.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
To torture a man you have to know his pleasures.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
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.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
I have to admit that he was not bad at combinatorial analysis - a branch, however, that even then I considered to be dried up.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
Is a mountain only a huge stone? Is a planet an enormous mountain?
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
If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
Where do consequences lead? Depends on the escort.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
I see a poem as a multi-coloured strip behind peeling plaster, in separate, shining fragments.
Stanislaw Lem
Image
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
Image
I do not like the way people use the more and more magnificent fruits of technology to their filthy deeds.
Stanislaw Lem