Lec Quotes

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?

Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.

He who limps is still walking.

The greater the dark, the easier to be a star.

Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.

On the top of each peak you are on the edge of the abyss

I give you bitter pills, in a sugar coating. The pills are harmless - the poison's in the sugar

In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.

He had a clear conscience. Never used it.

I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward.

Don't trust the heart, it wants your blood.

Even his ignorance is encyclopedic.

Even the masochists tell everything when tortured. From sheer gratitude.

All is in the hands of man. Therefore wash them often.

When smashing monuments, save the pedestals -- they always come in handy.

The constitution of a country should not violate the constitutions of its citizens.

Hay smells different to lovers and horses.

Oh, to be old again,” said the young corpse.

First, we are born in the same galaxy. Born of the same spe­cies. Our life­times over­lap. The meet­ings between humans are so unlikely as to be mira­cu­lous. To laugh, to cry, and to fall in love. Every­one is made up of a col­lec­tion of 1% chances. Thus, I am dazzled by the fact that there are so many mir­acles in this world.

Everything is illusion. Even that last sentence.

An empty envelope that is sealed contains a secret.

Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks it is Don Quixote.

Satirists, be careful. In the 1931 film by Rene Clair “Vive la Liberte” a song says, “Work is freedom.” In 1940 the sign on the gates to Auschwitz said: “Arbeit macht frei.

Their bodies were so close together that there was no room for real affection.

Do not expect too much of the end of the world.

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

We understand everything; that is why we understand nothing.

Even the voice of conscience undergoes mutation.

A funny word. E-lec-tion. Say it very slowly and it sounds disgusting. But if you say it just fast enough it almost sounds real, like it might even be legitimate

Ich stimme mit der Mathematik nicht überein. Ich meine, dass die Summe von Nullen eine gefährliche Zahl ist.

J'ai rencontré quelqu'un qui avait si peu lu qu'il devait inventer lui-même ses citations de classiques.

Politics: a Trojan horse race.

Sumienie miał czyste. Nieużywane

In Ländern, deren Bürger sich in Gefängnissen nicht sicher fühlen, fühlt man sich in der Freiheit ebenso unsicher.

All his life there was only one thing Lec was allowed to believe. It had surrounded him, cocooned him, constricted him with the same stifling softness as the layers of insulation around him now. For the first time in his life, Lev feels those bounds around his soul begin to loosen.

En el principio era el Verbo y en el final el lugar común.

Those who are ahead of their time often have to wait for it in uncomfortable quarters.

Do not ask God the way to heaven; he will show you the hardest one.

Vergessen wir nicht, dass auch uns die Bakterien - von der anderen Seite des Mikroskops - betrachten.

Den Blick in die Welt kann man mit einer Zeitung versperren.

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet. —Stanislaw J. Lec

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” S. J. LEC

La Lo­te­ría, con su re­par­to se­ma­nal de enor­mes pre­mios, era el único acon­te­ci­mien­to pú­bli­co al que los pro­les pres­ta­ban ver­da­de­ra aten­ción. Era pro­ba­ble que hu­bie­se mi­llo­nes de pro­les para quie­nes la Lo­te­ría fuese la razón prin­ci­pal, si no la única, para se­guir con vida. Era su de­lei­te, su lo­cu­ra, su anal­gé­si­co, su es­ti­mu­lan­te in­te­lec­tual. En lo que se re­fe­ría a la Lo­te­ría, hasta quie­nes ape­nas sa­bían leer y es­cri­bir eran ca­pa­ces de lle­var a cabo in­trin­ca­dos cálcu­los y sor­pren­den­tes lo­gros me­mo­rís­ti­cos. Había toda una tribu de in­di­vi­duos que se ga­na­ban la vida ven­dien­do sis­te­mas, pre­dic­cio­nes y amu­le­tos de la suer­te. Wins­ton no tenía nada que ver con la Lo­te­ría, que se ges­tio­na­ba desde el Mi­nis­te­rio de la Abun­dan­cia, pero sabía (como cual­quier otro miem­bro del Par­ti­do) que los pre­mios eran casi todos ima­gi­na­rios. Solo se pa­ga­ban pe­que­ñas sumas y los ga­na­do­res de los pre­mios gor­dos en reali­dad no exis­tían. En au­sen­cia de ver­da­de­ra co­mu­ni­ca­ción entre una parte de Ocea­nía y otra, no re­sul­ta­ba di­fí­cil ama­ñar­lo.

You can change your faith without changing gods, and vice versa.

Das Leben zwingt den Menschen zu allerlei freiwilligen Handlungen.

If one is seeking for Heaven on earth, has slept in geography class.

Замисли се, преди да си помислиш!

Es gab einen, der ein halbes Leben an einem Gedanken saß - und die andere Hälfte für diesen Gedanken.

Für viele Waren gibt es jetzt Plastikverpackungen; das Menschenfleisch aber wird immer noch in Zeitungspapier verpackt verkauft.

Jedermann will seinen Platz an der Sonne. (Wenn's geht, im Schatten.)

Die Vergangenheit wächst mit der Gegenwart.

Das Gewissen des Volkes steckt nicht unbedingt im Kopf des Staates.

Die künftigen Darwins werden vielleicht eine These aufstellen, dass die hochentwickelten Wesen (zu denen sie zählen werden) von den Menschen abstammen. Das wird ein Schock sein!

Der Mensch atmet leichter, wenn er das Maul hält.

If you are not a psychiatrist, stay away from idiots.

Laiks Namā rit citādi nekā Ārienē. Par to neviens nerunā, bet dažs labs paspēj nodzīvot divus mūžus un novecot tikmēr, kamēr citam aizrit nieka mēnesis un ne vairāk. Jo biežāk tu iekrīti starplaika caurumos, jo ilgāk dzīvo, bet to dara tikai tie, kas šeit jau ir sen, tādēļ atšķirība starp vecajiem un jauniņajiem ir milzīga, nav jābūt lielam gudrelim, lai to ieraudzītu. Paši alkatīgākie lec vairākas reizes mēnesī, un pēc tam velk līdzi sev vairākas savas pagātnes versijas. Tādu rīļu kā es Namā vairs nav, un tātad nav neviena, kurš būtu nodzīvojis tik loku, cik esmu nodzīvojis es. Lepoties nav vērts, bet es tomēr lepojos, jo izcila alkatība taču arī ir savdabīgs sasniegums.

Wszyscy chcą naszego dobra.Nie dajmy go sobie zabrać!

Wszyscy chcą naszego dobra. Nie dajcie go sobie zabrać.

The juke­box is a com­mon sym­bol in coun­try music; it’s only nat­ural for such a self-reflexive rhetor­i­cal style to iden­tify the mate­r­ial cir­cum­stances of its exis­tence. Beneath the vul­gar­ity of its ves­sel, the juke­box is inscrutably com­plex: a source of tes­ti­mony, a pro­lif­er­a­tion of voices, a col­lec­tion of sensations—all avail­able for a price. The juke­box, like the songs within it, is a com­mod­ity suf­fused with a mess of mean­ing.

Zwei Parallelen begegnen sich in der Unendlichkeit und sie glauben daran.

A funny word. E-lec-tion. Say it very slowly and it sounds disgusting. But if you say it just fast enough it almost sounds real, like it might even be legitimate.” “Torgon-off!

¿Cómo ejercitar la memoria para que aprenda a olvidar?

Es extraño que resulte tan difícil despertar ecos hasta en las cabezas huecas.

Quien olvida fácilmente, pasa mejor el examen de su vida.

La voz de la conciencia también pasa por un cambio de voz

Viele, die ihrer Zeit vorausgeeilt waren, mußten auf sie in sehr unbequemen Unterkünften warten.

If you are not a psychiatrist, stay away from idiots. They are too stupid to pay a layman for his company.

Do not expect too much of the end of the world. —Stanisław J. Lec, Aforyzmy. Fraszki, Kraków, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1977, “Myśli nieuczesane

Or, rather, there is a duel between them: death toys with life, life toys with death. Which of the two succumbs? Stanislaw Lec reverses the terms here: it is not we who defend ourselves against death, it is death that defends itself against us: 'Death resists us, but it gives in in the end.' Nothing else so stunning as this has ever been said about death. Needless to say, this dual relationship has nothing to do with interactivity, which is a parody of it. There is nothing interactive in the antagonistic process of reversibility and becoming. The feminine and the masculine are not 'interactive': that is ridiculous. Life and the world are not interactive -life isn't a question-and-answer session or a video game. There is nothing interactive in words when they are articulated in language. Interactivity is a gigantic mythology, a mythology of integrated systems or of systems craving integration, a mythology in which otherness is lost in feedback, interlocution and interface - a kind of generalized echography.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec,

Yet, when examined through the lens of metaphor, we clearly see that Mr. Lec tightly packs multiple objects into the single word “avalanche,” including the image of snowflakes as people and the inexorable force of opinion to which a lone voice may be subject when the desire for consensus and pressure for conformity quash potential dissent while simultaneously absolving individual members within a group of culpability for collectively made decisions. Despite its manifest complexity, this story effortlessly unfolds not so much on the page itself, but in the mind of the reader.

Кожны каменьчык лавіны лічыць, што ён нявінны

You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.

Every scarecrow has a secret ambition to terrorize.

The finger of God never leaves identical fingerprints.

I prefer the sign NO ENTRY to the one that says NO EXIT.

El que busca el cielo en la tierra se ha dormido en clase de geografía

Sumienie miał czyste. Nieużywane.

Optimists and pessimists differ only on the date of the end of the world.