a dog who learned to read

“A human being, appearances to the contrary, doesn’t create his own purposes. These are imposed by the time he’s born into; he may serve them, he may rebel against them, but the object of his service or rebellion comes from the outside. To experience complete freedom in seeking his purposes he would have to be alone, and that’s impossible, since a person who isn’t brought up among people cannot become a person.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“Furious and wild with fear, the potatoes flailed the air with their leaves and stamped their roots, but obviously this got them nowhere.”
― Stanislaw Lem

“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.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“Will you agree to be superseded, and start on the way to extinction without a struggle? I do not think you are decadent enough for that.”
― John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos