Quotable Lem

"A specialist is a barbarian whose ignorance is not well-rounded."

"Evolution is, as an engineer, an opportunist, not a perfectionist."

"The satisfaction with which you parade your proof of the lottery origin of human nature is not pure. It is, besides the joy of knowledge, a pleasure in befouling that which others consider lovely and hold dear."

"I could respect philosophers only as people driven by curiosity, never as propounders of truth."

— from His Master's Voice, by Stanislaw Lem.