Quotes from The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“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, quote from The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“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, quote from The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“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, quote from 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, quote from The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

“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, quote from The Star Diaries: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy

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“Ceil moaned. Mattie rocked. Propelled by the sound, Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clean they shine like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies torn from their mothers arms and given to Neptune could be seen like pink froth on the water. She rocked her on and on, past Dachau, where soul-gutted Jewish mothers swept their children's entrails off laboratory floors. They flew past the spilled brains of Senegalese infants whose mothers had dashed them on the wooden sides of slave ships. And she rocked on.
She rocked her into her childhood and let her see murdered dreams. And she rocked her back, back into the womb, to the nadir of her hurt, and they found it-a slight silver splinter, embedded just below the surface of her skin. And Mattie rocked and pulled-and the splinter gave way, but its roots were deep, gigantic, ragged, and they tore up flesh with bits of fat and muscle tissue clinging to them. They left a huge hole, which was already starting to pus over, but Mattie was satisfied. It would heal.”
― Gloria Naylor, quote from The Women of Brewster Place

“The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of political surveillance. Now...cyberspace exists exclusively to promote commerce, gossip and pornography. And of course to hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar, you have to hold it, you have to read it.”
― Ben Elton, quote from Blind Faith

“Half the ideas in this book are probably wrong.”
― Matt Ridley, quote from The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

“Our backs hut from gathering them: how hard they were to find among the concealing leaves, the frosted deceiving grass.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory

“I’m not a character in one of your novels.” “More’s the pity. You would speak more interesting dialogue if you were.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Alvin Journeyman

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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