His Master S Voice Quotes

“And yet we knew, for a certainty, that when first emissaries of Earth went walking among the planets, Earth's other sons would be dreaming not about such expeditions but about a piece of bread.”
― Stanisław Lem, His Master's Voice

“He told me once, I remember, that he had considered the possibility of creating something in the nature of a metatheory of philosophical systems, or for that matter a general program that would facilitate the automation of such a creation: an appropriately set machine would produce, first, the systems already in existence, and then, in the gaps left by the oversight or insufficient rigor on the part of the great ontologists, it would create new ones - with the ease of a machine producing screws or slippers. [...]

[B]ut then he saw that the task was an empty game not worth the effort, for nothing resulted from it but the possibility of generating those networks, checkerboards, edifices - those crystal palaces, if you like - built of words.”
― Stanislaw Lem