Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
An error is more useful than truth: truth is a thought suffering from arteriosclerosis.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
Here I saw, with my own eyes, that laughter was the most terrible weapon: you can kill anything with laughter - even murder itself.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you; you hate it because you are afraid of it; you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
All truths are erroneous. This is the very essence of the dialectical process: today's truths become errors tomorrow; there is no final number.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
And happiness...Well, after all, desires torment us, don't they? And, clearly, happiness is when there are no more desires, not one...What a mistake, what ridiculous prejudice it's been to have marked happiness always with a plus sign. Absolute happiness should, of course, carry a minus sign — the divine minus.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
And tomorrow--who knows what happens? Do you get it? I don't know and no one knows--it's all unknown! You understand, that this is the end to the Known? This is the new, the improbable, the unpredictable.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
The ancient God created the old man, capable of erring - thus he erred himself.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
I am like a machine being driven to excessive rotations: the bearings are incandescing and, in a minute, melted metal will begin to drip and everything will turn to nothing. Quick: get cold water, logic. I am pouring it over myself by the bucketload but the logic sizzles on the hot bearings and dissipates elusive white steam into the air.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
The myth about the angel who rebelled against his Lord is the most beautiful of all myths, the proudest, the most revolutionary, the most immortal of them all.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
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.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself -- the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
Name me the final number, the highest, the greatest. But that's absurd! If the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a final number? Then how can you speak of a final revolution? There is no final one. Revolutions are infinite.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
We have lived through the epoch of suppression of the masses; we are living in an epoch of suppression of the individual in the name of the masses; tomorrow will bring the liberation of the individual - in the name of man.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
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 na?ve and so frighteningly complex.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
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.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
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.
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes
Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes
Revolution is everywhere, in everything. It is infinite. There is no final revolution, no final number. The social revolution is only one of an infinite number of numbers: the law of revolution is not a social law, but an immeasurably greater one. It is a cosmic, universal law - like the laws of the conservation of energy and of the dissipation of energy (entropy).
Евгений Замятин
151 Quotes