Gianmarco > Gianmarco's Quotes

“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
― Sun tzu, The Art of War

“To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy.”
― Sun Tzu

“A surfeiting of terror soon made terror a cliché.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“Death is a fascinating lure to men who can stand aside and watch it operate on someone else. (from "The Conqueror")”
― Richard Matheson, Collected Stories, Vol. 2

“But it's so hard to make things simple and so easy to make them complicated.”
― Richard Matheson, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories

“Everyone has a secret place in his mind. Otherwise relationships would be impossible.”
― Richard Matheson, A Stir of Echoes

“In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to. But monotony was the greater obstacle, and he realized it now, understood it at long last.”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

“Was the life force something more than words, a tangible, mind-controlling potency? Was nature somehow, in him, maintaining its spark against its own encroachments?”
― Richard Matheson

“Was there a logical answer, something he could accept without slipping on banana skins of mysticism?”
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend

“He hungered for peace and there was no peace. Terror was his only food.”
― Richard Matheson, Backteria and Other Improbable Tales

“To look at the entire journey all at once was stupidity. You thought of it in segments; that was the only way.”
― Richard Matheson, The Shrinking Man

“This, he knew, was courage, the truest, ultimate courage, because there was no one here to sympathize or praise him for it. What he felt was felt without the hope of commendation.”
― Richard Matheson, The Shrinking Man

“But now, in the final hours, even hope had vanished. Yet he could smile. At a point without hope he had found contentment. He knew he had tried and there was nothing to be sorry for. And this was complete victory, because it was a victory over himself.”
― Richard Matheson, The Shrinking Man

“Perhaps jungle life, despite physical danger, was a relaxing one. Surely it was free of the petty grievances, the disparate values of society. It was simple, devoid of artifice and ulcer-burning pressures.”
― Richard Matheson, The Shrinking Man

“When matter is put aside, all creation becomes exclusively mental, that’s all.”
― Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.”
― Stanislaw Lem

“How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another?”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?'

'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“If a man who can’t count finds a four leaf clover, is he lucky?”
― Stanisław Lem

“Tell me something. Do you believe in God?'

Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. 'What? Who still believes nowadays?'

'It isn't that simple. I don't mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I'm no expert in the history of religions, and perhaps this is nothing new--do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an...imperfect God?'

'What do you mean by imperfect?' Snow frowned. 'In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect, considered that their attributes were amplified human ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance, required humble submission and sacrifices, and and was jealous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of sulks and family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mortals...'

'No,' I interrupted. 'I'm not thinking of a god whose imperfection arises out of the candor of his human creators, but one whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is a...sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at first. A god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created systems or mechanisms that serves specific ends but have now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat.'

Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any of the wary reserve of recent weeks:

'There was Manicheanism...'

'Nothing at all to do with the principles of Good and Evil,' I broke in immediately. 'This god has no existence outside of matter. He would like to free himself from matter, but he cannot...'

Snow pondered for a while:

'I don't know of any religion that answers your description. That kind of religion has never been...necessary. If i understand you, and I'm afraid I do, what you have in mind is an evolving god, who develops in the course of time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remaining aware of his powerlessness. For your god, the divine condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding that, he despairs. But isn't this despairing god of yours mankind, Kelvin? Is it man you are talking about, and that is a fallacy, not just philosophically but also mystically speaking.'

I kept on:

'No, it's nothing to do with man. man may correspond to my provisional definition from some point of view, but that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve is age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside. If there was only a since human being in existence, he would apparently be able to attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in complete freedom--apparently, because a man not brought up among other human beings cannot become a man. And the being--the being I have in mind--cannot exist in the plural, you see? ...Perhaps he has already been born somewhere, in some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some childish enthusiasm that will set him putting out one star and lighting another. We will notice him after a while...'

'We already have,' Snow said sarcastically. 'Novas and supernovas. According to you they are candles on his altar.'

'If you're going to take what I say literally...'

...Snow asked abruptly:

'What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?'

'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained.”
― Stanislaw Lem, Solaris by Stanislaw Lem | Summary & Study Guide

“The only writers who have any peace are the ones who don't write. And there are some like that. They wallow in a sea of possibilities. To express a thought, you first have to limit it, and that means kill it. Every word I speak robs me of a thousand others, and every line I write means giving up another.”
― Stanisław Lem, Hospital of the Transfiguration

“When smashing monuments, save the pedestals. They always come in handy.”
― Stanislaw Lem

“No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets.”
― Stanislaw Lem

“But what am I going to see?

I don't know. In a certain sense, it depends on you.”
― Stanislaw Lem, Solaris

“The night stared me in the face, amorphous, blind, infinite, without frontiers. Not a single start relieved the darkness behind the glass.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“For moral reasons ... the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created ... intentionally.”
― Stanisław Lem

“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.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris