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Futurologists have been multiplying like flies since the day Herman Kahn made Cassandra's profession "scientific," yet somehow not one of them has come out with the clear statement that we have wholly abandoned ourselves to the mercy of technological progress. The roles are now reversed: humanity becomes, for technology, a means, an instrument for achieving a goal unknown and unknowable.

— Stanisław Lem His Master's Voice (1968)

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More quotes by Stanisław Lem

If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.

Solaris (1961)

Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way.

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)

Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom.

His Master's Voice (1968)

Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.

Solaris (1961)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Stanisław Lem (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.