In Polish:

…w niezmiernej gwiazdowej pustce nagle zjawia się maleńki, wręcz mikroskopijny przebłysk świadomości – mojej albo pańskiej, albo mrówki czy jakiegoś ptaszka – a potem, gdy kończy się życie, on gaśnie i dalej trwa ta niezmierzona nicość. Wydaje mi się, że warto, aby ta świadomość zabłysła…

Stanisław Lem: Matka Boska się nie zjawi

In Russian:

…в бесконечной звездной пустоте внезапно происходит малюсенький, просто микроскопический проблеск сознания - моего или вашего, муравья или какой-нибудь птички - а потом, когда кончается жизнь, он гаснет, и продолжается это бесконечное ничто. Мне кажется, этому сознанию стоит блеснуть….

Станислав Лем: Матерь Божия не явится

jurek: I love his writings! I read everything he ever wrote in both Polish and English. Admittedly my most favorite works were his earliest (The Cyberiad for example), and his latest were most disapointing. But Americans made movies from some of his books, so he is not all that unknown.

spkr4thedead51: Haha! I’m in the middle of reading The Cyberiad Stories (in English). While I agree with you that one of the main themes of the stories is the power of human intelligence, I don’t think that the fact that his “technology” is dated (i.e. computers with vacuum tubes and switches and such) is a bad thing.

His stories are essentially all Aesopian morality fables without the obvious moral summary at the end.

As for his seeming lack of popularity, aside from 10-15 authors (primarily the giants who have essentially defined the genre and it’s subsets), the vast majority of all science fiction authors are only well-known by people who really invest themselves into the genre. This means that a lot of very very good authors who many other authors have been influenced by (like Lem) or who have won genre awards aren’t very well known. One of English professors at my college, John Kessel, won a Nebula award for short fiction in the early 80s and is a very prolific short fiction author, but very few people know of him outside of the science fiction writing community. And part of that is because he primarily writes short fiction, much like Lem. Short fiction doesn’t get as widely read as novels and so isn’t as familiar to the mainstream, and I think this is probably why Lem isn’t all that well known.

b_a_t:
http://www.lem.pl/english/main.htm
Should be noted, that for the last 10-15 years he seems to get disappointed by SF and switched to publicist activity…

lactam:
Indeed. While I cannot remember exactly where he was writing his columns, I do remember that they were quite bitter.
Not quite the ravings of a mad lunatic, but just a grumpy old man.