Quotes from Yevgeny Zamyatin

The ancient God created the old man, capable of erring - thus he erred himself.

Literature is painting, architecture, and music.

Let the answers be wrong, let the philosophy be mistaken - errors are more valuable than truths: truth is of the machine, error is alive; truth reassures, error disturbs.

Every genuine poet is necessarily a Columbus. America existed for centuries before Columbus but it was only Columbus who was able to track it down.

We comes from God, I from the Devil.

Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.

Is it not clear, however, that bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of the fraction called happiness?

I prefer being wrong in my own way to being right in someone else's.

The latest literary discussions reflect a struggle between two artistic methods - romanticism and realism, with the latter clearly ascendant for the time being.

There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.

The world is kept alive only by heretics.

An error is more useful than truth: truth is a thought suffering from arteriosclerosis.

The myth about the angel who rebelled against his Lord is the most beautiful of all myths, the proudest, the most revolutionary, the most immortal of them all.

The next stage of development, perhaps in the distant future, will be a social order under which there will be no need for the coercive power of the state.

The art of the word is painting + architecture + music.

What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons... we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless "Why?" and "What next?".

To reflect the entire spectrum, the dynamics of the adventure novel must be invested with a philosophic synthesis of one kind or another.

Dogma, static positions, consonance - all these are obstacles to catching the disease of art, at least in its more complex forms.

The mighty power of logic cleanses all it touches.

What makes you think that nonsense is bad? If they'd nurtured and cared for human nonsense over the ages the way they did intelligence, it might have turned into something of special value.

Is it not clear, however, that bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of the fraction called happiness?

A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth reading.

Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.

Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.