365 quotes

Success is more often accompanied by the pretense of splendor than by authentic
splendor.

Futurology: a probe into the heaven and hell to come.

Evil generates both evil systems and systems of evil, and only in their results are the
two equal.

A risk-free world is a world without fear – and also without boldness.

Where everything can be attained without effort, all values die.

Space is not “Earth enlarged to Galactic Dimensions”. It is something qualitatively
new.

There are no boundaries to poetry, only boundaries to talent. When somebody great
comes along, you'll recognize him by his voice.

The tragedy of the twentieth century is that there was no way of carrying out a preliminary test of the theories of Karl Marx on mice.

Religions are prostheses that can make it easier to reconcile ourselves to the thought of the displeasing perspective of non-existence.

There is no knowledge without imagination and there is no imagination without knowledge.

Happiness occurs incidentally, accidentally, and cannot be the goal of human desires.

If you force yourself to think up a way of making someone happy, that's the worst method of making them happy.

Science can be reconciled with religious doctrine, but in the long run this is of little benefit to either science or religion.

There is no such thing as a good war.

Everyone has enough fortitude to bear the misfortunes of others.

Technological progress is like a straight razor: you can shave with it, and you can also cut your throat.

I regard reason as the ultimate sanction for ethics, and we should follow its dictates above all.

I have created my own minimalistic ethical code: I simply try to behave decently and not behave like a swine toward anyone.

Something tells me that what I hear about awful and repulsive people will probably turn out to be true, whereas what they say about their magnanimity and righteousness will be true to a lesser degree.

I spent so much time at the typewriter that I have typed out 40 books. And the part of the body I sit on bothered me more than my head.

Comparing my futurological imaginings with reality resembles some sort of car crash. What came about was not what I was dreaming of.

I received my first typewriter from my father at the age of 12 because I had such horrible penmanship that they told me at school that nothing good would ever come of me, and from that time on I write only on the typewriter.

The question of when one stops writing is a matter of good manners. You have to get up from the table when you’re still a little bit hungry – that is my motto.

In an unfortunate and uncanny twist of fate, it has turned out that a great majority of what I have fantasized about is hardening into reality.

I’m not such an extreme pessimist, I’m... in general, what I’d call an optisimist, that is, I’m a little bit of an optimist, and a little bit of a pessimist.

I regard classical Latin as one of the most beautiful languages.

I don’t like it when bombing innocent people to death is termed bestial. Beasts don’t do such things.

I am at heart – I say this with a certain exaggeration – both a conservative and a visionary. I can predict certain things, but I do not wish for them.

As my own Archimidean fulcrum, I have chosen intersubjectively verifiable experimentation.

In principle I am an agnostic, but the kind who has practically convinced himself that God is a very positive force.

Of all the possible varieties of censorship, I acknowledge only one. The censorship of stupidity.

In my life and work I have been the cat that walked by himself. I did not belong to any poetic or literary group or school, I have not created any trend or movement, and although I have turned up through my writing in oddly different territories, from cybernetic sociology and philosophy through the invented criticism of non-existent novels, to science fiction, I have always been a newcomer from outside greeted by my readers less often with acclaim than with shock – completely understandably, because in all the genres and themes that I have taken up and practiced, I have been a loner and a usurper.

Not to look like a poor fool cursed with insatiable curiosity when I finally appear before the All-Knowing Being, I would whittle all of my questions to a single one: What is meaningful and what is only nonsense in the lectures of this AI Colossus created by me, called Golem XIV?

Even if God gave me a special license to bash people in the chops, let me tell you, I would not make excessive use of it.

Solaris is an attack on the anthropocentric mythology that lies at the basis of contemporary cosmogony.

Solaris is an attack on the anthropocentric mythology that lies at the basis of contemporary cosmogony.

I must admit that the effort I put into writing Golem XIV was unmatched by the effort of writing any other book.

Everybody has their own preferences: football, copulation, drinking beer out of the can. As for me, I derive enormous pleasure from learning various grim things from hard books.

I regard myself as a realist writer, because I deal with real matters. I am not interested in problems of such properties of the world as the world does not possess.

I regard science fiction as a twentieth-century literary genre that suits me very well as an author, but less so as a reader.

Regardless of its artistic merit, my literature usually has some kind of Idea painstakingly enfolded in it that cannot be found in the work of Others; that is, it is intellectually original.

I regard science-fiction literature as a branch of hypothesis-generating realistic prose.

As an author, I have a detector: if, after reading a given book, I feel base jealousy over not having written it myself, then I know that I am dealing with something important, interesting, and original.

There is one more important consideration, in my opinion, that ought over time to determine conversion to my creed. That is, the influence of my books is actually cumulative, and the whole makes more of an impact than the separate works.

Golem XIV, in a certain sense, is me, and more importantly, if the lipstick and props are removed, the ideas expressed there are in fact my beliefs.

Obviously I belong to the tradition of the Enlightenment and am a rationalist, but of a somewhat distorted kind. A Distorted Rationalist is sometimes a close relative of a madman.

In writing a book, I lay out my knowledge in the most harmonious way. That’s why, whether I want them to or not, my books turn out to be wiser than I am.

I don’t especially value ethics based on reflexes – I rather believe in the ethics of understanding.

The ideal of the fantasist should therefore not be “maximum fantasy”, but only “optimal fantasy” – to the degree demanded by the goal of his work.

In fact I was always most interested in philosophy, and I think that I looked for it not so much among the philosophers as among computer scientists, physicists, and biologists.

I still feel respect for scientific creativity that transcends mere erudition.

As a writer I always prefer to be the prophet of events (even a false prophet) rather than their booster and bard.

I am always ready to revise my opinions, outlook, and judgments in their totality if only I come across convincing proofs of the opposing point of view. Except that I have so far been unable to find any.

I can very quickly distinguish a wise man from a fool or a blind man from a genius, after a few pages picked at random. This is my fulcrum, the same one that Archimedes looked for to move the earth.

5. I possess strength of imagination and I am a slave to logic; it is hard for me to imagine anything that is in no way connected with the real world.

Chance – or a specific arrangement of genes – endowed me with abilities that in the twentieth century correspond to the vocation of writer. And that vocation was located somewhere on the border of art and science.