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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.

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
Like
Finally
Inferred
Constantly
Dissolves
Image
Microscope
Ultimate
Microscopes
Whose
Skepticism
Existence
Increased
Possible
Sharp
Things
Begins
Magnification

More quotes by 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.
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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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No one reads if someone does read, he doesn't understand if he understands, he immediately forgets.
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If a man who can’t count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky?
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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 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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I have to admit that he was not bad at combinatorial analysis - a branch, however, that even then I considered to be dried up.
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I never read to kill time. Killing time is like killing someone's wife or a child. There is nothing more precious for me than time.
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Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.
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Is a mountain only a huge stone? Is a planet an enormous mountain?
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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 demand for absolute purity of genres is becoming nowadays an anachronism in literature.
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We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos.
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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.
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Where do consequences lead? Depends on the escort.
Stanislaw Lem
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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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This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past.
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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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A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.
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