189 Quotes by Stanisław Lem

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.

Behind every glorious facade there is always hidden something ugly.

Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him.

We are like snails, each stuck to his own leaf.

I don't resist progress, but I have a growing feeling that mankind uses it mostly for disgraceful purposes.

My pessimism (which, by the way, is far from absolute) originated with my despair in the lack of perfection to be found in human nature. I was attempting in my successive books to show the inevitable handicap of the human condition.

For moral reasons ... the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created ... intentionally.

If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently

The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes.