Yevgeny Zamyatin Quotes

How do you know nonsense isn't a good thing? if human nonsense had been nurtured and developed for c...

I looked silently at her lips. All women are lips, all lips. Some are pink and firmly round: a ring,...

Happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.

White-crested waves crash on the shore. The masts sway violently, every which way. In the gray sky t...

Gripped with bitter cold, ice-locked, Petersburg burned in delirium. One knew: out there, invisible ...

The moon, our own, earthly moon is bitterly lonely, because it is alone in the sky, always alone, an...

More wine for me, pour me some more!" "You smart girl, I knew you're a smart girl, just teasing...”...

The government (or humanity) would not permit capital punishment for one man, but they permitted the...

But a thought swarmed in me; what if he, this yellow-eyed being – in his ridiculous, dirty bundle of...

So, take the idea of "rights" and drip some acid on it. Even the most adult of the Ancients knew: th...

In the widely open cup of the armchair was I-330. I, on the floor, embracing her limbs, my head on h...

You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you you hate it because you are afraid of it you lo...

If human foolishness had been as carefully nurtured and cultivated as intelligence has been for cent...

Strictly speaking, she was out of order. This dear 0-, how shall 1 say it?The speed of her tongue is...

They say there is a kind of flower that blooms only once a century, Then couldn't there be one that ...

N-no-o, all that excitement, it wouldn't reach us,' Timosha spoke gloomily. 'We're like the sunken c...

But you can't plead with autumn. No. The midnight wind stalked through the woods, hooted to frighten...

But clouds bellied out in the sultry heat, the sky cracked open with a crimson gash, spewed flame-an...

Latchkey! I mean . . . I want to talk to you . . .' He fell silent, glancing behind him and shifting...

Let my notes, like the most sensitive seismograph, record the curve of even the most insignificant v...

I'm like a machine being run over its RPM limit. The bearings are overheating: a minute longer and t...

The only reason I'm writing this down is to show how human reason, even very sharp and exact human r...

It is said there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. Why should there not be some t...

And I learned from my own experience that laughter was the most potent weapon: laughter can kill eve...

knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith

The most agonising thing is to drop doubt into a man about his being a reality, three-dimensional - ...

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

The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.

In the ancient world, this was understood by the Christians, our only (if very imperfect) predecesso...

Do you believe that you will die? Yes, man is mortal, I am a man, ergo... No, that isn't what I mean...

We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed. ("X")

I'm like a machine being run over its RPM limit: The bearings are overheating - a minute longer, and...

Children are the only bold philosophers. And bold philosophers are invariably children.

You can only love something that refuses to be mastered.

We need writers who fear nothing. ("Our Goal")

I am like a machine being driven to excessive rotations: the bearings are incandescing and, in a min...

And how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one. The number of revolutions is infinit...

Literature is painting, architecture, and music.

The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic To...

But if I am not a criminal, I beg to be permitted to go abroad with my wife temporarily, for at leas...

If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.

What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons; we need the most ultimate, the most ...

I walked alone through the twilit street. The wind was whirling, driving, carrying me like a slip of...

Life itself has lost its plane reality: it is projected, not along the old fixed points, but along t...

Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.("Literature, Revolution,...

The most effective way of destroying art is the canonization of one given form. And one philosophy.

Revolution is everywhere, in everything. There is no final revolution, no final number.

True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, b...

The sun's champagne streamed from one body into another. And there was a couple on the green silk of...

Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. I...

Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in ...

...sentences of the court on moral issues are always passed in absentia.

Do you believe that you will die? Yes man is mortal I am a man ergo... no that isn't what I mean. I ...

Darkness. The door into the neighboring room is not quite shut. A strip of light stretches through t...

Cruel', O'Kelly laughed, 'it's cruel to tell children the truth. If anything convinces me of God's m...

The nights were long, like the braids of a pretty girl, and the days were short, like a girl's sense...

Tipsy, they tumbled early into bed - to get as much sleep as they could. So they would feel less hun...

The moon hangs alien, heavy, like a lock on a door; the door is tightly shut. ("The North")

The moon climbed out of the ravine, blue, skinny, as if it had been fed on nothing but skimmed milk....

The flame will cool tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow (in the Book of Genesis days are equal to ye...