Stanislav Lem "Futurological Congress". Stanislav Lem "futurological congress" Lem quotes

Stanisław Lem is a leading representative of Polish science fiction, philosophy, futurology and journalism. We are familiar with Lem, first of all, thanks to his novel Solaris, which was subsequently filmed more than once. But no less interesting are his other works, which all as one are turned to the future, to the cosmos, about which the author himself dreamed so much. We bring to the reader's attention the most vivid quotes by Stanislav Lem about a person and his place in the future.

As you know, nothing gets old as fast as the future (quote from the collection of essays by Stanislav Lem "The Sum of Technology", 1964).

A dream, if given free rein, will always overcome reality (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel Futurological Congress, 1971).

Not everything and not everywhere exists for us (quote from the novel by Stanislav Lem "Invincible", 1964).

How many terrible mysteries, alien to human understanding, are still fraught with space? Do we really have to appear everywhere, carrying an all-destroying force on our ships, in order to shatter everything that contradicts our concepts? (quote from the novel by Stanislav Lem "Invincible", 1964, the words of Rohan).

We are not looking for anyone but a person. We don't need other worlds. We need our reflection. We don't know what to do with other worlds (quote from Stanisław Lem's Solaris, 1961, words by Snout).

I must tell you that we do not want to conquer space at all. We want to expand the Earth to its limits (quote from Stanisław Lem's Solaris, 1961, words by Snout).

A man set off to explore other worlds, other civilizations, not fully knowing his own secrets, back streets, wells, barricaded dark doors (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel Solaris, 1961, words by Chris Kelvin).

But after all, a desperate god is a man ... (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel Solaris, 1961, words by Snout).

A person is able to master only what he can understand, and he can only understand what is expressed in words. What is not expressed in words is inaccessible to him (quote from the novel by Stanislav Lem "Futurological Congress", 1971).

We are banal, we are the grass of the universe - and we are proud of our banality (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel Solaris, 1961).

Each of us knows that he is a material being, obeying the laws of physiology and physics, and that even having gathered together the forces of all our feelings, we cannot fight these laws, we can only hate them (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel Solaris, 1961).

I believe, and if my faith is not in vain, the One in Whom I believe knows about it even without my declarations (quote from Stanislav Lem's cycle "The Star Diaries of Iyon the Quiet", Journey Twenty-first, 1971).

We liquidated the hell of passions, and then it turned out that paradise disappeared along with it. Everything is warm now (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel "Return from the Stars", 1961).

Any information assumes the presence of the addressee. “Information in general” does not exist (quote from the collection of essays by Stanislav Lem “The Sum of Technology”, 1964).

Knowledge is irreversible, and there is no return to the twilight of blissful ignorance (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel The Voice of the Lord, 1968).

However, people are always bad. Anyone who seeks peace, silence, grace will find all this in the cemetery, and not in life (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel "Hospital of Transfiguration", 1955).

A poet is a person who knows how to beautifully be unhappy (quote from the novel by Stanislav Lem "Hospital of Transfiguration", 1955).

I was afraid that in the presence of nobility you would want to restore order here, which, translated into the language of practice, would mean terror (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel "Eden", 1959).

Society, not being able to concentrate resistance, direct hostile feelings to a specific person, becomes to some extent morally disarmed (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel "Eden", 1959).

Everyone wants to do evil, to be at least a little scoundrel and a monster, while remaining, however, generous and noble - downright incomparable (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel "Futurological Congress", 1971).

We saw as much as the blind could see (quote from Stanisław Lem's novel Eden, 1959).

How can you understand the ocean if you cannot understand each other? (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel "Solaris", 1961, words by Veibek).

If you lie like this for hours in the night, then your thoughts can go very far, in a very strange direction, you know ... (quote from Stanislav Lem's novel Solaris, 1961, Hari's words).

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Lem Stanislav

Aphorisms

The essence of old age is that you gain experience that cannot be used.

If a person cannot do something well, then you don’t need to do it at all!

You need to be yourself. Always by yourself, with all your might by yourself, and the more, the more difficult it is: not to try on other people's fates.

No one can give more than he who has lost everything.

There is nothing richer in its possibilities than emptiness.

There is no worse punishment than lonely eternity.

There are no dreams that dream together.

There is no defense against lies. It is a combinatorial function of possible connections.

Telling the truth is like wandering through a labyrinth filled with good intentions.

Humanity is the sum of our defects, shortcomings, our imperfection, this is what we want to be, but we fail, we can’t, we don’t know how, it’s just a hole between ideals and realization.

The world is the madness of one Superbrain, who, because of himself, has completely gone mad.

Man is a monkey that can make the sharpest razor to cut another monkey's throat?

A person laughs not because he is having fun, but he is having fun because he is laughing.

The secretary was so beautiful, as if she could not even type on a typewriter.

It is ugly to arrange a public end of the world to arrange your private affairs.

People don't want to live forever. People just don't want to die.

Sensations need to be organized, not invented!

A politician should not be too smart. A very smart politician sees that most of the tasks before him are completely unsolvable.

Stupidity is the driving force of history.

Civilization is created by idiots, and the rest disentangle the mess.

Modern Civilization: The Exchange of Values ​​for Conveniences.

Mass culture is an anesthetic, an analgesic, not a drug.

There can be no justice where there is a law proclaiming complete freedom.

It is difficult to judge justice where crimes and evil have crossed the line of human understanding.

There is no lesser evil. Ethics cannot be measured by arithmetic.

Probably, there have never been great times - someone always pulled out someone's legs, just with different efforts.

Exaggeration is the mother of stupidity.

Kindness is an ally of crime.

To master the world, you need to name it more precisely.

The path to the stars leads through many years of imprisonment. Astronautics smells like a prison.

Nothing goes missing in space.

The police are a cosmic constant.

Fiction does not deal with man, but with the human race as such, and even with possible kinds of intelligent beings.

War is the worst way to gain knowledge about a foreign culture.

If anything, from an atom to meteorites, is usable as a weapon, then it will be so used.

Three laws of evolution: "The meaning of the messenger is in the message"; "Views arise from error wandering"; "What is created is less perfect than the creator."

Being is based on a mistake, it corrects a mistake by a mistake, returns by a mistake, creates by mistakes in such a way that chance becomes the fate of the World.

Law of Professor Tarantoga: "No one reads anything; if he reads, he understands nothing; if he understands, he immediately forgets."

A specialist is a barbarian whose ignorance is not comprehensive.

Man is a creature that most willingly talks about what he knows least about.

To know something, you must already know something.

This book is smarter than myself (about the book "The sum of technology").

Technology is the independent variable of civilization.

The technological skeleton of our civilization is so strong that it can withstand a lot, even big catastrophes.

The most important thing for understanding the design of machines is the knowledge of the creatures that built them.

Why are you not afraid of a machine that is a thousand times stronger than you, but horrified by the thought of a machine that is many times more intelligent than you?

The more technically advanced (the more perfect!) the tool, the more primitive, worthless and useless information is transmitted with its help.

When a device is constructed that will be able to lower or increase the intelligence of any person at will, then there will be a demand for lowering intelligence, since they say that the happiest idiots.

If the computer was created to regulate the life of society, then who will regulate the computer?

Donda's Law: "What a small computer can do with a large program can also be done by a large computer with a small program; hence the logical conclusion that an infinitely large program can run by itself, that is, without any computer."

WHAT we think is always much less complicated than WHAT we think.

If hell exists, then it must be computerized.

The world needs to be changed, otherwise it will begin to change us in an uncontrolled way.

The future always looks different than we can imagine.

Above the flat five-story plinth of the Costa Rican Hilton rose another hundred and six floors. On the roofs of the ledges of the building there were tennis courts, swimming pools, solariums, go-kart tracks, carousels that simultaneously served as roulettes, a shooting gallery (where you could shoot at dummies depicting anyone of your choice - special orders were carried out within a day), as well as an open sink stages with installations for spraying listeners with tear gas.

Some of the hotel equipment puzzled me - for example, a three-meter iron bar in the corner of the bathroom, a camouflage suit in a wardrobe, a bag of crackers under the bed. On the jasper wall of the bathroom, next to the towels, hung a coil of a real climbing rope, and inserting the key into the English door lock, I noticed a small sign: "The management guarantees that there are no bombs in this room."
***
And as for crackers, rod, rope and camouflage, one of the American futurologists condescendingly explained to me that the hotel business in our era requires previously unknown security measures. Each such item increases the survivability of the guest. To these words, I, frivolously, did not pay due attention.

In the morning, however, it was not up to it, as the hosts invited us for a cocktail. This modest ceremony was almost uneventful, only the US delegation was pelted with rotten tomatoes.

The US Ambassador was present in person, delivering a speech on the need for cooperation between peoples; True, he spoke under the protection of six broad-shouldered guys in civilian clothes, who kept us at gunpoint. I, I confess, felt somehow uneasy, and then, unfortunately, the dark-skinned delegate of India, who was tormented by a runny nose, who was standing nearby, reached into his pocket for a handkerchief. As the press secretary of the Futurological Society subsequently convinced me, the means used were necessary and humane. The guards are armed with machine guns of large caliber, but of low penetrating power, the same as those of the guards of passenger aircraft, and outsiders do not risk anything - unlike before, when a bullet, after laying down a terrorist, pierced another five or six innocent people. And yet it is not too pleasant when a neighbor riddled with bullets falls at your feet, even if this is a common misunderstanding that is settled by the exchange of diplomatic notes.

Instead of the US ambassador, only the third secretary of the embassy arrived, with powerful security, alone in the entire hall - in a tuxedo (an armored vest is difficult to hide under pajamas). Guests from the city, as I heard, were subjected to searches, and mountains of confiscated weapons seemed to be already rising in the hall.

On the way to the conference room, I picked up a pile of local newspapers - such is my habit. Of course, I do not read in all languages, but an educated person will always understand something in Spanish.

The speaker was given four minutes - a bit too much, perhaps, because 198 reports from 64 countries were announced. To save time, the reports had to be studied in advance, and the speaker only called numbers - the numbers of the key paragraphs of his abstract.
***
Stanley Hazleton from the USA immediately stunned the audience by rapping out: 4,6, II, which implies 22; 5, 9, ergo 22; 3, 7, 2, 11, which again makes 22!! Someone stood up and shouted that it was still 5 and maybe 6, 18, 4. Hazleton refuted the objection on the fly, explaining that this or that was around 22. Looking at the license plate, I found that 22 signifies the ultimate disaster.

The spiritual enlightenment of the police turned out to be especially unexpected for the government because the benignators, as Trottelreiner explained, act on people the more strongly, the less they were subject to natural, innate good impulses.

Around eleven in the evening, tank units appeared on the theater of operations, that is, on the square with adjacent parks. They were ordered to crush the love for their neighbor that had taken possession of the metropolitan police, and they carried out the order, sparing no shells. Satisfying grenade exploded a meter from Alphonse Mauvin; the blast wave tore off the poor fellow's fingers of his left hand and his left ear, and he assured me that he had long considered this hand superfluous, there was nothing to say about the ear, and if I wanted, he would immediately donate the second to me; he even took a penknife out of his pocket, but I delicately disarmed the reporter and took him to a makeshift infirmary.

Falling on their knees, they vying with each other asked me to have mercy on them and to beat them well for corrupting public morals. Imagine my amazement when, looking closer, I recognized in these flagellants the employees of Playboy in full force, along with the editor-in-chief! It was he who did not allow me to get away, he was so remorseful.
***
I gave a ratchet - and in the basement I found myself in the arms of Mr. Harvey Simworth, the very one who first thought of turning children's fairy tales into pornographic stories ("Overgrown Little Red Riding Hood", "Ali Baba and the Forty Lovers", etc.), and then made state, turning the world classics around. His method was extremely simple: any name began with the words "sex life" ("... Snow White with seven dwarfs", "... Aladdin with a lamp", "... Alice in Wonderland", "... Gulliver ", etc., ad infinitum). In vain did I excuse myself with extreme fatigue. With a sob in his voice, he begged at least to give him a good kick. Nothing to do - had to obey again.

In the most severe forms of defeat by kindness (an attack of universal tenderness with caressing convulsions looked especially creepy), the professor recommended mustard plasters and large doses of castor oil in combination with gastric lavage.

The roar gradually subsided; professional curiosity dismantled journalists, and we cautiously moved towards the park. Here, with the lively participation of the secret police, black, white, pink and mixed masses were celebrated. A huge crowd nearby wept bitterly; above it was a poster: "DO NOT Pity US PROVOCATORS!" Judging by the number of Jews converted, the government's expenses for their maintenance were considerable ...

Opening my eyes, I saw a glass dome above me; some people in white, with masks on their faces and hands raised as if in blessing, were talking in a half whisper.
“Yes, it was Quiet,” I heard. - Here, in the jar, no, only the brain, the rest is no good. Give me anesthesia.
A piece of cotton wool on a nickel disk obscured the whole world for me, I wanted to scream, call for help, instead I breathed in a breath of burning gas and disappeared into oblivion.

"... We have perfected your body with the help of the best - full - satisfactory - such as we found at hand, organs (cross out the unnecessary). We guarantee the operation of these organs for one year, six months, a quarter, three weeks, six days ( cross out the unnecessary.) You must understand that..."

There was complete silence. A bird was chirping outside the window. I also found time to tweet!

I got out on the shore; the rats have diminished - they must have dispersed in all directions. Only four remained. They played bridge at the very feet of Trottelreiner, sound asleep, with his cards.
***
Is it possible that rats actually play bridge? I looked at the fattest cards. She threw them as she had to. What a bridge! Well, thank God ... I breathed a sigh of relief.

And what children are here - not spoiled, obedient! In my time, such people met only in edifying books ...

A dream, if given free rein, will always overcome reality. Psivilization requires sacrifice. We've all been through this - even me. After all, even the most hopeless case is not difficult to win before a non-existent tribunal!

Well, you know - the Valley of Jehoshaphat, from which the devils carry everyone except the client, and at the end of the Day of Judgment, the Lord God personally declares him a saint, and even with servility. Some (but this is the snobbery of cretins) solicit that in the end the Lord invites them to change places with him. It's childish, you know. Americans are especially fond of it.

The theory of good was developed by crowds of thinkers, almost no one touched the theory of evil - out of false shame, and as a result, it was taken over by idiots and ignoramuses. The opinion that it is possible to act skillfully, inventively, subtly and cunningly without training, skills, inspiration, without deep knowledge, is fundamentally erroneous. There is little inquisition, tyranny, both biologies here; all this is just an introduction to the problem as such. However, there are no universal recipes - suum malum cuique! [To each his own evil! (lat.).]

You must be aware that thanks to various zooformins, you can temporarily become - that is, feel like - a turtle, an ant, a ladybug and even a jasmine (with the help of inflorizing prebotanide). You can split your personality into two, three, four or more parts, and if you get to double digits, there is a phenomenon of compaction of reality: here it’s not reality, but myv, a lot of “I” in a single flesh. There are also amplifiers of reality that intensify the inner life to such an extent that it becomes more real than the outer one. Such is the world today, such are the times, colleague! Omnis est Pillula. [All that exists is a pill (lat.).]

The secretaries behaved defiantly in their sleep. Jim Stantor, snoring and tossing from side to side, strangled a rat that was scratching chocolate out of his pocket; Both he and she were scared.

Kneeling by the wall, Dringenbaum, that pedantic Swiss, corrected his abstract by the pale light of a flashlight. The occupation, in which the professor went deep, heralded the beginning of the second day of the futurological congress; at this thought, I burst into such laughter that the manuscript fell out of his hands, flopped into the black water and swam - into the unknown future.