More Quotes by Yevgeny Zamyatin
The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.
Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.
There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.
All truths are erroneous. This is the very essence of the dialectical process: today's truths become errors tomorrow; there is no final number. This truth (the only one) is for the strong alone. Weak-nerved minds insist on a finite universe, a last number; they need, in Nietzsche's words, "the crutches of certainty". The weak-nerved lack the strength to include themselves in the dialectic syllogism.
Heretics are the only bitter remedy against the entropy of human thought.
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.
We need writers who fear nothing. ("Our Goal")
There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times.
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?
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.
