Stanislaw Jerzy Lec Quotes

Belief and seeing: They are both often wrong.

No doubt about it: error is the rule, truth is the accident of error.

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

A misconception remains a misconception, even when it is shared by the majority of people.

We are led to believe a lie When we see not through the eye.

If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves. The recognition of illusion is also its ending. Its survival depends on your mistaking it for reality.

Error is certainty's constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater.

One illusion is as good as another.

You think the shadow is the substance.

If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it's not. And it's not.

Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.

Image is what people perceive my life to be. It's nothing like the truth.

Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.

It's so easy for us to misperceive and see the things in others that we want to see. And, when we're wrong, and often we're dead wrong, we miss the truth.

Things are not always as they seem.

Sometimes what we see, what's going on in front of us, isn't really what's happening.

Things are NEVER what they seem, Pa, I thought. I used to think they were, but I was wrong or stupid or blind or something. Old folks are forever complaining about their failing eyesight, but I think your vision gets better as you get older. Mine surely was.

I feel that one of the most important lessons that can be learned is that what we "see" may be different than what is actually in front of us.

They who imagine truth in untruth and see untruth in truth will never arrive at the truth.

Did you ever think that maybe what you see isn't really what's true?

The truth is a fog, in which one man sees the heavenly host and the other one sees a flying elephant.

Generally, a lot of the things people think are made up are real, a lot of the things people think are real are made up, a lot of the things people think are spontaneous are cleverly faked, and a lot of the things people think are fake are spontaneous.

Antithesis is the narrow gateway through which error most prefers to worm its way towards truth.