stanislaw lem quotes

Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in
their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect.
And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it
was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put
them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit,
and everything was just fine ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.
-- Stanislaw Lem

The first requisite for immortality is death.
-- Stanislaw Lem

Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(phi)!

-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.

-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones
were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the
corners as bodies of a lower grade ...

-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads
lead down.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "The Cyberiad"

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.

-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.

Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such a-squared cos 2(thi)!
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads
lead down.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "The Cyberiad"

Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific
mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned
with what ____does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been
so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further
here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically,
discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical,
and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent,
but each nonexisted in an entirely different way ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!

-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.

Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such a-squared cos 2(thi)!
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(phi)!
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

When you jump for joy, beware that no-one moves the ground from beneath
your feet.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Unkempt Thoughts"

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in
their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect.
And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it
was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put
them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit,
and everything was just fine ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
wholly unconcerned with what ____does exist. Indeed, the banality of
existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all,
one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
different way ...

-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were
set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the corners as
bodies of a lower grade ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(phi)!
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

When you jump for joy, beware that no-one moves the ground from beneath
your feet.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Unkempt Thoughts"

The first requisite for immortality is death.
-- Stanislaw Lem

Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats
in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every
respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside
it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,
then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they
chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ...

-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"