Stanislaw Jerzy Lec Quotations

You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?

The weakest link in a chain is the strongest because it can break it.

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don't bite everybody.

You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.

The window to the world can be covered by a newspaper.

The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.

Don't trust the heart, it wants your blood.

When smashing monuments, save the pedestals-they always come in handy.

Value your words. Each one may be the last.

Never lie when the truth is more profitable.

Whenever man begins to doubt himself, he does something so stupid that he is reassured.

Mankind deserves sacrifice - but not of mankind.

Do not turn your back on anyone. You may be painted on one side only.

He who wants to get to the source must swim against the current.

Never saw the branch you are sittin on, unless they are trying to hang you from it.

Many who had been ahead of their time, had to wait for her in very uncomfortable quarters.

Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier.

There were grammatical errors even in his silence.

You can change your faith without changing gods, and vice versa.

The first condition of immortality is death.

When no wind blows, even the weathervane has character.

We are all equal before the law, but not before those appointed to applyit.

Morality is either a social contract or you have to pay cash.

People find life entirely too time-consuming.

All is in the hands of man. Therefore wash them often.

The first requisite for immortality is death.

Do not make gods in your own images.

The spirit of the times can haunt even the atheists.

Many who tried to enlighten were hanged from the lamppost.

Where a harsh law rules, people yearn for lawlessness.

Puritans should wear fig leaves on their eyes.

Stupidity is no excuse of not thinking.

You cannot play the Song of Freedom on an instrument of oppression.

It isn't easy to live after death. It takes a lifetime.

How many prison years in the years since Christ!

To god what is God's, to Caesar what is Caesar's. To humans - what?

Some people drop their wings in order to grow a hump

What do I believe? I believe in God, if he exists.

All Gods were immortal.

Most of the sighs we hear have been edited.

Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a nation.

At the beginning there was the Word; at the end just the Cliche.

An empty envelope that is sealed contains a secret.

Men have slow reflexes. In general it takes several generations later for them to understand.

Does a little fish, swimming though the net's eye, suffer from inferiority complex?

We looked into each other's eyes. I saw myself, she saw herself.

Do I have no soul as punishment for not believing in the soul?

Everything is illusion. Even that last sentence.

Burning stakes do not lighten the darkness.

Among giants, try and be a dwarf; among dwarfs, try and be a giant; but among equals, try and be an equal

Legends are often destroyed by those in need of its stuff.

Oh, to know God's private address.

Pants get shiny even on a throne.

A sodomite got very excited looking at a zoology text. Does this make it pornography?

Create your own myths; that is how the gods got started.

It's the priests who have demands, not the gods.

When reasons are weak, attitudes stiffen.

When gossip gets old it becomes a myth.

The constitution of a country should not violate the constitutions of its citizens.

Impartiality is not neutrality. It is partiality for justice.

The consumer's side of the coffin lid is never ostentatious.

An apt aphorism half kills, half immortalizes.

Perfect imitations must share the fate of the originals.

To whom should we marry Freedom, to make it multiply?

Be yourself. A horse without the lancer is still a horse; a lancer without the horse is just a man.

Pity that the only way to paradise is in a hearse.

Those who put blinders on their eyes should remember that the set also includes bridle and a whip.

Never turn your back on reality. It surrounds you.

Myth is nothing more than ancient gossip.

Every scarecrow has a secret ambition to terrorize.

Even Einstein had to rely for his time on his clock.

Powerless rage can work miracles.

Many a zero thinks it is the ellipse on which the Earth travels.

The exit is usually where the entrance was.

Each juggler should be trained in the ignorance of the laws of physics.

There are parodies of non-existent things.

Every bush can burn if you fire it with your imagination.

Sometimes you have to be silent to be heard.

A fat person lives shorter but eats longer.

Politics: a Trojan horse race.

A man who is a genius and doesn't know it, probably isn't.

Illiterates have to dictate.

On the top of each peak you are on the edge of the abyss

I prefer the sign NO ENTRANCE to the sign which says NO EXIT.

"Oh to be old again," said a young corpse.

I has a dream about reality. It was such a relief to wake up.

An error becomes an error when born as truth.

Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.

The man who bows before the ruler, shows his behind to the courtiers

If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he entitled to happiness?

Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's; and unto human beings, what?

Let him who is without guilt cast the first stone. A trap. Because then he will be no longer without guilt.

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

There is a dispute about the existence of God. Both sides try to hide that they killed Him - even before He came into being.

Witches admitted their relations with the devil. Our blood boils - how could they be forced to admit this when there is no devil. But reason tells us this is not true. The devil does exist and was in fact the inquisitor.