Stanislaw Lec Quotes

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.

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

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

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

Even his ignorance is encyclopedic.

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

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.

An empty envelope that is sealed contains a secret.

Everything is illusion. Even that last sentence.

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

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.

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

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

We understand everything; that is why we understand nothing.

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

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

Politics: a Trojan horse race.

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

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

Das Leben zwingt den Menschen zu allerlei freiwilligen Handlungen.

¿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

The finger of God never leaves identical fingerprints.

C'è chi vorrebbe capire ciò in cui crede, e chi vorrebbe credere in ciò che capisce.

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

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

Every scarecrow has a secret ambition to terrorize.

Stanislaw Jerzy Lec,

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.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.