Arkady Strugatsky > Quotes

“The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably absolute opportunity to understand everything and know absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified system of the world and explain every phenomenon away on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn't require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas plus so-called intuition and so-called common sense.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“Мы будем делать Добро из Зла, потому что его больше не из чего делать.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“A picnic. Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. Cars drive off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around... Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind... And of course, the usual mess—apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody’s handkerchief, somebody’s penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND NO ONE WILL GO AWAY UNSATISFIED!”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“intelligence is the ability of a living creature to perform pointless or unnatural acts.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“Strange department, this. Their motto was: "The comprehension of Infinity requires infinite time." I did not argue with that, but then they derived an unexpected conclusion from it: Therefore work or not, it´s all the same."
In the interests of not increasing the entropy of the universe, they did not work.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Понедельник начинается в субботу

“The problem is we don’t notice the years pass, he thought. Screw the years—we don’t notice things change. We know that things change, we’ve been told since childhood that things change, we’ve witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we’re still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes—or we search for change in all the wrong places.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“Look into my soul, I know - everything you need is in there. It has to be. Because I've never sold my soul to anyone! It's mine, it's human! Figure out yourself what I want - because I know it can't be bad! The hell with it all, I just can't think of a thing other than those words of his - HAPPINESS, FREE, FOR EVERYONE, AND LET NO ONE BE FORGOTTEN!”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“Or how about this hypothetical definition. Reason is a complex type of instinct that has not yet formed completely. This implies that instinctual behavior is always purposeful and natural. A million years from now our instinct will have matured and we will stop making the mistakes that are probably integral to reason. An then, if something should change in the universe, we will all become extinct - precisely because we will have forgotten how to make mistakes, that is, to try various approaches not stipulated by an inflexible program of permitted alternatives.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“СЧАСТЬЕ ДЛЯ ВСЕХ, ДАРОМ, И ПУСТЬ НИКТО НЕ УЙДЕТ ОБИЖЕННЫЙ!”
― Аркадий Стругацкий, Roadside Picnic

“Xenology is an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. At its core is a flawed assumption—that an alien race would be psychologically human.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“mankind's most impressive achievement is that it has survived and intends to continue doing so.”
― Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

“You need money so you don’t have to think about money.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“И всегда будут короли, более или менее жестокие, бароны, более или менее дикие, и всегда будет невежественный народ, питающий восхищение к своим угнетателям и ненависть к своему освободителю. И все потому, что раб гораздо лучше понимает своего господина, пусть даже самого жестокого, чем своего освободителя, ибо каждый раб отлично представляет себя на месте господина, но мало кто представляет себя на месте бескорыстного освободителя.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Hard to Be a God

“And no matter how much the gray people in power despise knowledge, they can’t do anything about historical objectivity; they can slow it down, but they can’t stop it. Despising and fearing knowledge, they will nonetheless inevitably decide to promote it in order to survive. Sooner or later they will be forced to allow universities and scientific societies, to create research centers, observatories, and laboratories, and thus to create a cadre of people of thought and knowledge: people who are completely beyond their control, people with a completely different psychology and with completely different needs. And these people cannot exist and certainly cannot function in the former atmosphere of low self-interest, banal preoccupations, dull self-satisfaction, and purely carnal needs. They need a new atmosphere— an atmosphere of comprehensive and inclusive learning, permeated with creative tension; they need writers, artists, composers— and the gray people in power are forced to make this concession too. The obstinate ones will be swept aside by their more cunning opponents in the struggle for power, but those who make this concession are, inevitably and paradoxically, digging their own graves against their will. For fatal to the ignorant egoists and fanatics is the growth of a full range of culture in the people— from research in the natural sciences to the ability to marvel at great music. And then comes the associated process of the broad intellectualization of society: an era in which grayness fights its last battles with a brutality that takes humanity back to the middle ages, loses these battles, and forever disappears as an actual force.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Hard to Be a God

“The God hypothesis, for example, allows you to have an unparallelled understanding of absolutely everything while knowing absolutely nothing.”
― Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

“In some sense, we’re all cavemen—we can’t imagine anything more frightening than a ghost or a vampire. But the violation of the principle of causality—that’s actually much scarier than a whole herd of ghosts… or Rubinstein’s monsters… or is that Wallenstein?”

“Frankenstein.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“How can I give up stalking when I have a family to feed? Get a job? I don't want to work for you, your work makes me puke, do you understand? This is the way I figure it: if a man works with you, he is always working for one of you, he is a slave and nothing else. And I always wanted to be myself, on my own, so that I could spit at you all, at your boredom and despair.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“„Аз съм животно, нали виждаш, животно съм. Дума не мога да обеля, не ме научиха да приказвам, не умея да мисля, тези гадове не ми дадоха да се науча да мисля. Но ако ти наистина всичко можеш и всичко знаеш, и всичко разбираш… намери му цаката! Надникни в душата ми, знам, че там е всичко, което ти трябва. Сигурен съм! Та нали никога и на никого не съм продавал душата си! Тя си е моя, човешка! Ти, само изцеди от мене каквото искам, нали е изключено да искам нещо лошо!… Проклето да е дано, та аз нищо не мога да измисля освен тези неговите, детските думи: «Щастие за всички даром и нека никой да не бъде пренебрегнат!”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“All these conversations had left a certain sediment in his soul, and he didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t dissolving with time, but instead kept accumulating and accumulating.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“Когда бог создавал время, — говорят ирландцы, — он создал его достаточно. Г. Бёль”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Понедельник начинается в субботу

“a man who is well brought-up may read anything. The only people who boggle at what is perfectly natural are those who are the worst swine and the finest experts in filth. In their utterly contemptible pseudo-morality they ignore the contents and madly attack individual words.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“...It's like trying to fit an octopus into a pair of tuxedo pants. And not a plain octopus at that, but an octopus that doesn't even exist.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Definitely Maybe

“Есть я, нет меня, сражаюсь я, лежу на диване — никакой разницы. Ничего нельзя изменить, ничего нельзя исправить. Можно только устроиться — лучше или хуже. Все идёт само по себе, а я здесь ни при чем. Вот оно — ваше понимание, и больше понимать мне нечего… Вы мне лучше скажите, что я с этим пониманием должен делать?”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Град обреченный

“Sometimes I ask myself, what the hell are we all running around for, anyway? To make money? But what the hell do we need money for if all we do is run around making it?”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“Неизвестно, кто первый открыл воду, но уж наверняка это сделали не рыбы.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Малыш

“Борьба со злом! Но что есть
зло? Всякому вольно понимать это по-своему. Для нас, ученых, зло в
невежестве, но церковь учит, что невежество - благо, а все зло от знания.
Для землепашца зло - налоги и засухи, а для хлеботорговца засухи - добро.
Для рабов зло - это пьяный и жестокий хозяин, для ремесленника - алчный
ростовщик. Так что же есть зло, против которого надо бороться, дон Румата?
- Он грустно оглядел слушателей. - Зло неистребимо. Никакой человек не
способен уменьшить его количество в мире. Он может несколько улучшить свою
собственную судьбу, но всегда за счет ухудшения судьбы других. И всегда
будут короли, более или менее жестокие, бароны, более или менее дикие, и
всегда будет невежественный народ, питающий восхищение к своим угнетателям
и ненависть к своему освободителю. И все потому, что раб гораздо лучше
понимает своего господина, пусть даже самого жестокого, чем своего
освободителя, ибо каждый раб отлично представляет себя на месте господина,
но мало кто представляет себя на месте бескорыстного освободителя. Таковы
люди, дон Румата, и таков наш мир.”
― Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Hard to Be a God

“То что наиболее естественно, то наименее приличествует человеку.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, The Ugly Swans

“I was told that this road would take me to the ocean of death, and turned back halfway. Since then crooked, round-about, godforsaken paths stretch out before me.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Definitely Maybe

“We don't notice things change. We know that things change, we've been told since childhood that things change, we've witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we're still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes--or we search for change in all the wrong places.”
― Arkady and Boris Strugatsky