. . . according to Lem's Law, 'No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets' -- owing to general lack of time, the oversupply of books, and the perfection of advertising.
Stanisław LemThe chances that lose in the lottery of being are invisible
Stanisław LemA world compelled to good alone is as much a shrine to compulsion as a world compelled to evil only.
The Twenty-first Voyage
Im wyższa w galaktyce cywilizacja, tym więcej tam naśmiecono.
Stanisław LemTags: science-fiction
But what am I going to see?
I don't know. In a certain sense, it depends on you.
Tags: introspection solaris self-exploration lem
On the surface, I was calm: in secret, without really admitting it, I was waiting for something. Her return? How could I have been waiting for that? We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny. So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? 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...
Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed? In the name of what? In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.
Tags: love science-fiction solaris
Но у меня нет дома. Земля? Я думаю о ее больших, набитых людьми городах, в которых потеряюсь, исчезну почти так же, как если бы совершил то, что хотел сделать на вторую или третью ночь, - броситься в океан, тяжело волнующийся внизу. Я утону в людях.
Stanisław LemAnyhow, the criterion of common sense was never applicable to the history of the human race. Averroës, Kant, Socrates, Newton, Voltaire, could any of them have believed it possible that in the twentieth century the scourge of cities, the poisoner of lungs, the mass murderer and idol of millions would be a metal receptacle on wheels, and that people would actually prefer being crushed to death inside it during frantic weekends exoduses instead of staying, safe and sound, at home?
Stanisław LemThese views were voiced by the school of 'optessimists', i.e. philosophers who derived optimism for the future from a pessimistic appraisal of the present." The 21st Voyage, The Star Diaries
Stanisław LemTags: philosophy lem
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