“Of the two powers, the two categories that take possession of us when ...” — Stanisław Lem Quote

“Of the two powers, the two categories that take possession of us when we enter the world, space is by far the less mysterious. . . . Space is, after all, solid, monolithic. . . . Time, on the other hand, is a hostile element, truly treacherous, I would say even against human nature.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“One can accomplish something only so long as one cannot accomplish everything.”

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”

“Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because the moment simply is.”

“That, in fact, nothing is as simple as it seems, or, more, nothing is at all as it seems, and usually older. That this ground could have been carried by the wind before settling here.”

“In my opinion, the only way to conquer stage fright is to get up on stage and play. Every time you play another show, it gets better and better.”

“How did it get so late so soon?”

“For we thought all the time that we were passing through time when we really weren't, when we never have. We've just been moving along with time. We said, there's another second gone, there's another minute and another hour and another day, when, as a mater of fact the second or the minute or the hour was never gone. It was the same one all the time. It had just moved along and we have moved with it.”