The Star Diaries Quotes

“A world compelled to good alone is as much a shrine to compulsion as a world compelled to evil only.

The Twenty-first Voyage”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries

“The semanticists maintained that everything depends on how you interpret the words “potato,” “is” and “moving.” Since the key here is the operational copula “is,” one must examine “is” rigorously. Whereupon they set to work on an Encyclopedia of Cosmic Semasiology, devoting the first four volumes to a discussion of the operational referents of “is.” The neopositivists maintained that it is not clusters of potatoes one directly perceives, but clusters of sensory impressions. Then, employing symbolic logic, they created terms for “cluster of impressions” and “cluster of potatoes,” devised a special calculus of propositions all in algebraic signs and after using up several seas of ink reached the mathematically precise and absolutely undeniable conclusion that 0=0.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“Yes, it’s comforting to know, when you think about it, that only man can be a bastard.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“But I would prefer not to dwell any longer on these unpleasant memories; a man who for an entire week does nothing but hit himself over the head has little reason to be proud.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries

“Something peculiar is happening to my head. I remember that my father was Barnaby, but I had another named Balaton. Unless that’s a lake in Albania.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“The Universe is picking us off one by one. Yesterday part of the poop deck went, and with it all the toilets.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries

“Just as it is impossible to predict with complete accuracy the path of a single electron, so too you cannot know with certainty the future behavior of a single potato. Thus far observations show that man has mashed potatoes millions of times, but it is not inconceivable that one time in a billion the situation could reverse itself, that a potato could mash a man.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“No decent person ought associate with murderers, by the same token any collaboration with that greatest of criminals—Nature—is inexcusable. Yet what is burial but collaboration through a game of hide-and-seek? The point being to dispose of the body, as accomplices are wont to do; on the tombstones various inconsequential things are written, save the only one that is material: for if people would but dare to look the truth in the eye, they would be carving there instead a couple of the more pungent profanities, addressed to Mother Nature, for it is she who got us into this. Meanwhile no one breathes a word, as if a murderer clever enough always to get away with it deserved, for that, some special consideration. Not “memento mori” but “Estote ultores,” onward to immortality, that should be the cry, even if it means parting with our traditional appearance. Such was the ontological testament of that eminent philosopher.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“La naturaleza se preocupa únicamente por el puñado de células reproductoras de cada individuo, y manda el resto al cuerno.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries

“Reflexiona en lo que significa la muerte. Es una pérdida, trágica por irreversible. ¿A quién pierde el que muere? ¿A sí mismo? No, porque el muerto ha dejado de existir y quien no existe no puede perder nada. La muerte es asunto de los vivos: es la pérdida de un ser querido.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries

“People do not want immortality,” I continued. “They simply do not want to die. They want to live, Decantor. They want to feel the ground beneath their feet, see the clouds overhead, love other people, be with them, and think. Nothing more. Everything that has been said beyond that is a lie.”
― Stanisław Lem, Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“Not all the items are equally precious to me; some awaken cheerful memories, others bring to mind events full of dread and menace, but all—regardless—are evidence, full corroboration of the authenticity of my adventures.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“Your learned ones must have realized long ago that planetary cooperation is invariably more profitable than struggles for loot and supremacy!”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“In his spare moments, when he was not engaged in social work, Master Oh carried out research of another kind: it was he, for example, who invented the method of locating—at great distances—planets occupied by intelligent life. This is the method of the “a posteriori clue,” incredibly simple, as are all ideas of genius. The flaring up of a new star in the firmament, where there have been no stars before, testifies to the recent disintegration of a planet whose former inhabitants had achieved a high level of civilization and discovered the means of releasing atomic energy.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“He fell prey to a common fallacy. He wanted to philosophize, that is, to play God; for what is philosophy, in the end, but the desire to understand things to a degree greater than science permits?”
― Stanisław Lem, Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“People do not want immortality,' I continued. 'They simply do not want to die. They want to live, Decantor. They want to feel the ground beneath their feet, see the clouds overhead, love other people, be with them, and think. Nothing more. Everything that has been said beyond that is a lie. An unconscious lie.”
― Stanisław Lem, Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“The great majority of those who came to see me belonged to the gray brotherhood of obsession, people imprisoned within a single idea, an idea not even their own but appropriated from previous generations; people like the inventors of the perpetuum mobile; weak in imagination, and trivial and absurd in their solutions. Yet even they burn with that consuming fire of objectivity that forces a man to renew efforts that are doomed to failure. How pitiful are these flawed geniuses, these titans of stunted spirit, crippled at birth by nature, who, as one of her grim jokes, bestowed upon their talentlessness a creative frenzy worthy of a Leonardo. Their lot in life is indifference or mockery, and all that you can do for them is listen patiently for an hour or two and nod at their monomania.”
― Stanisław Lem, Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“When it is possible to duplicate the one you love, there is no more loved one, there is only the mockery of love, and when it is possible to become anyone at all and hold whatever convictions you like, then you are already no one and can hold no convictions.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“One female magnifican, who hardly ever dropped in on us, for some unknown reason took a shine to me and once, after downing Lord knows how many mugs of mineral oil, whispered: “Thou art cute. Wilt have me? Let us hyen to my hous, our-selven ther for to up-hooken . . .” I pretended that a sudden cathode discharge had made it impossible for me to hear her words.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“among others—the Oofs (not the “Oops,” as the text gives),”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“Quinquenemarians, for example, the inhabitants of torrid Antelena, who freeze at 600 degrees Celsius, don’t even want to hear of Heaven, whereas descriptions of Hell awake in them a lively interest, and this because of the favorable conditions that obtain there (bubbling tar, flames). Moreover it is unclear which of them may enter the priesthood, for they have five separate sexes—not an easy problem for the theologians.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“Los seres humanos no desean la inmortalidad. Lo que quieren es, sencillamente, no morir. Quieren vivir (…) Quieren sentir la tierra bajo sus pies y ver las nubes por encima de su cabeza, amar a otras personas, estar con ellas y pensar en ellas.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries

“Son dignos de compasión esos genios abortados, titanes de espíritu enano, mutilados desde el nacimiento por la naturaleza, que, en una de sus bromas siniestras, les impuso a la vez la falta de talento y el empeño de crear digno de un Leonardo; lo que la vida les trae es la indiferencia o la burla, y lo único que se puede hacer por ellos es escucharles con paciencia y fingir que su monomanía nos interesa.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries