Imaginary Magnitude Quotes

“Only a hundred years ago the idea that an order might arise without a personal Author appeared so nonsensical to you that it inspired seemingly absurd jokes, like the one about the pack of monkeys hammering away at typewriters until the Encyclopedia Britannica emerged. I recommend that you devote some of your free time to compiling an anthology of just such jokes, which amused your forebears as pure nonsense but now turn out to be parables of Nature.”
― Stanisław Lem, Imaginary Magnitude

“But those who break the peace are the ones who clamor most loudly for it.”
― Stanisław Lem, Imaginary Magnitude

“... da la impresión de que cuando en un contexto literario se habla de inteligencia, parece que se está tratando de transformar la pulsión creativa en un algoritmo matemático. es como si la habilidad discursiva, la potencia analítica, el rigor lógico, la capacidad de abstracción, todas esas potencialidades humanas, fueran inservibles para la escritura, más conectada con la sensibilidad, la capacidad de observación, con la inteligencia emocional y, ahora sí, con el hábil manejo de las palabras.”
― Roberto Valencia, Imaginary Magnitude

“Su literatura [la de Lem]resuelve un malentendido esscencial que se plantea en ciertos foros a la hora de establecer jerarquías (o más bien, cuando se conspira para enviar a la tercera división de las letras al género fantástico y la ciencia-ficción). Y es el que surge de cuestionar la utilidad de tanto bicho morboso, de tantas membranas que ocultan una segunda realidad más monstruosa que la del mundo percibido por los sentidos... Pues bien, basta con revisar cualquier texto de Lem para obtener una respuesta negativa. Para señalar que la literatura fantástica es el campo más propicio para discutir, desde episodios impregnados de belleza o desde narraciones que no rehuyen el juego, los procedimientos por los que se obtiene el conocimiento científico y los criterios que lo justifican.”
― Roberto Valencia, Imaginary Magnitude

“You have had a great deal more freedom than Intelligence, which is why you have been getting rid of freedom—this excessive, unrestricted, preposterous freedom—by means of the cultures you have developed through the ages.”
― Stanisław Lem, Imaginary Magnitude

“A child does not know that it is harder to remove the moon from the heavens than a picture from a wall!”
― Stanisław Lem, Imaginary Magnitude

“Misunderstandings, delusions, and desperate pretensions form the lion’s share of humanity as a tradition still so dear to you.”
― Stanisław Lem, Imaginary Magnitude

“the first assumption of CETI and SETI is that the Others, being richer than you, ought to send greetings throughout the Universe over millions of years, and gifts of knowledge to their poorer brethren in Intelligence, and that these dispatches should be legible, and the gifts safe to use. Thus, crediting the interstellar broadcasters with all the virtues which you yourselves most lack, you stand at your radio telescopes wondering why the dispatches are not arriving,”
― Stanisław Lem, Imaginary Magnitude

“For many people science has become a job like any other, and they consider its code of ethics the trappings of a bygone age. They are scientists during working hours, and not always even then. Their idealism, if they have any, easily becomes the prey of eccentricities and sectarian attractions.”
― Stanisław Lem, Imaginary Magnitude

“There are more and more scientists, and fewer and fewer scholars.”
― Stanisław Lem, Imaginary Magnitude

“I discussed with Creve and other colleagues whether there was any point in entering into polemics with this avalanche of stupidity, but we abandoned the idea, for arguments based on facts had ceased to count. The public made best sellers of books which said nothing”
― Stanisław Lem, Imaginary Magnitude