Yevgeny Zamyatin Quotes
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Along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox—the single most worthy path of the fearless mind . . . .
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You're in a bad way! Apparently, you have developed a soul.
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It is not possible to build on negative emotions. Genuine literature will come only when we replace hatred for man with love for man.
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An error is more useful than truth: truth is a thought suffering from arteriosclerosis.
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And everyone must lose his mind, everyone must! The sooner the better! It is essential — I know it.
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What is it to you if I don't want others to want for me, if I want to want myself - if I want the impossible.
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Children are the only brave philosophers. And brave philosophers are, inevitably, children.
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Sentences of the court on moral issues are always passed in absentia.
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We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed.
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Literature is painting, architecture, and music.
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Love and hunger rule the world. Ergo, to rule the world, one must master love and hunger.
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Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.
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There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.
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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.
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The nights were long, like the braids of a pretty girl, and the days were short, like a girl's sense. ("The North")
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Individual consciousness is just sickness.
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It is the specialist's task to talk about means, about centimeters. An artist's task is to talk about the goal, about kilometers, thousands of kilometers. The organizing role of art consists of infecting the reader, of arousing him with pathos or irony -- the cathode and anode in literature. But irony that is measured in centimeters is pathetic, and centimeter-sized pathos is ridiculous. No one can be carried away by it. To stir the reader, the artist must speak not of means but of ends, of the great goal toward which mankind is moving.
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Philosophers of genius, children, and the people are equally wise - because they ask equally foolish questions. Foolish to a civilized man who has a well-furnished European apartment with an excellent toilet and a well-furnished dogma.
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We need writers who fear nothing. ("Our Goal")