Quotes from Yevgeny Zamyatin

The news I read was so upsetting that it drove all else out of my mind. There was but one short line:   "According to reliable sources, new traces have been discovered of the elusive organization which aims at liberation from the beneficent yoke of the State."   "Liberation?" Amazing, the extent to which criminal instincts persist in human nature.

what if it is only the beginning, only the first meteorite of a hail of thundering fiery rocks poured by infinity upon our glass paradise?

Wings are needed in order to fly, but we don't need to fly anywhere. We have arrived at the terminus. We have found what we wanted.

Truth is one, and the true path is one. And that truth is two times two and that true path is four.

From my own experience I know that the cruelest thing is to make a person doubt his own reality...

The natural road from nothingness to greatness is to forget that one is a gram and to feel that one is one-million of a ton!

They longed for someone to tell them, once and for all, the meaning of happiness, and then to bind them to it with a chain. What are we doing now, if not this very thing?

Liberation! It is remarkable how persistent human criminal instincts are! I use deliberately the word "criminal," for freedom and crime are as closely related as—well, as the movement of an aero and its speed: if the speed of an aero equals zero, the aero is motionless; if human liberty is equal to zero, man does not commit any crime. That is clear. The way to rid man of criminality is to rid him of freedom.

AÃ…Â¥ žije Jednotný stát, aÃ…Â¥ žijí ?ísla, aÃ…Â¥ žije Dobroditel!

bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of the fraction known as happiness?

Christians of the ancient world (our only predecessors, as imperfect as they were) also understood this: humility is a virtue and pride is a vice; "WE" is divine, and "I" is satanic.

the speed of the tongue should always be some seconds behind the speed of thought, but certainly not the other way around.

the only things that are aware of themselves and conscious of their individuality are irritated eyes, cut fingers, sore teeth. A healthy eye, finger, tooth might as well not even be there. Isn't it clear that individual consciousness is just sickness?

Who knows who you are . . . A person is a novel: you don't know how it will end until the very last page. Otherwise, it wouldn't be worth reading to the very end

places. A gate in the fence and a lonely spot. The monument of the Two Hundred Years' War.

Knowledge! What does that mean? Your knowledge is nothing but cowardice. No, really, that's all it is. You just want to put a little wall around infinity. And you're afraid to look on the other side of that wall.

there should be no love just because, but only 'love because of.

For death is exactly the most complete dissolution of the self in the universe. Hence: L=f (D), love is the function of death.

OvÅ¡em, je to jasné: chceme-li stanovit skute?nou hodnotu funkce, musíme ur?it její limitu. A je jasné, že limitou v?erejÅ¡ího hloupého "rozplynutí ve vesmíru" je smrt. Protože smrt je vlastnÄ› mé úplné rozplynutí ve vesmíru. Ozna?íme-li tedy lásku L a smrt S, bude L = f(S), tj. láska a smrt…

Kdoví… ÄŒlovÄ›k je jako román: do poslední stránky nevíÅ¡, jak skon?í. Jinak by ho ani nestálo za to ?íst…

The ancient God created the old man, capable of erring—hence he erred himself.

What if he, this yellow-eyed creature, in his disorderly, filthy mound of leaves, in his uncomputed life, is happier than we are?

Man is like a novel: up to the last page one does not know what the end will be. It would not be worth reading otherwise

how should I put it . . . the speed of her tongue is miscalibrated. The delay on the tongue should always be a few seconds over the speed of thought and never the other way around.