13 quotes
If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.
Solaris (1961)
Any attempt to understand the motivation of these occurrences is blocked by our own anthropomorphism. Where there are no men, there cannot be motives accessible to men.
Solaris (1961)
Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.
Solaris (1961)
The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that Finis vitae sed non amoris [Life ends but not love], is a lie, useless and not even funny.
Solaris (1961)
We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos.
Solaris (1961)
You are only a puppet. But you don't realize that you are.
Solaris (1961)
To replay human existence — fine, but to replay it in the way a drunk replays a corny tune, pushing coins over and over into the jukebox?
Solaris (1961)
Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve his age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside.
Solaris (1961)
We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don't like it any more.
Solaris (1961)
We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds.
Solaris (1961)
The fate of a single man can be rich with significance, that of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate sense of the word.
Solaris (1961)
Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding out what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.
Solaris (1961)
I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.
Solaris (1961)