More Quotes by Yevgeny Zamyatin
I am aware of myself. And, of course, 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?
It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.
If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.
Children are the boldest philosophers. They enter life naked, not covered by the smallest fig leaf of dogma, absolutes, creeds. This is why every question they ask is so absurdly naïve and so frighteningly complex.
Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.
Children are the only brave philosophers. And brave philosophers are, inevitably, children.
You're in a bad way! Apparently, you have developed a soul.
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.
The most agonising thing is to drop doubt into a man about his being a reality, three-dimensional - and not some other kind of reality.
Explosions are not comfortable.
