Quotes by Yevgeny Zamyatin

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.

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

Life itself has lost its plane reality: it is projected, not along the old fixed points, but along the dynamic coordinates of Einstein, of revolution. In this new projection, the best-known formulas and objects become displaced, fantastic, familiar-unfamiliar. This is why it is so logical for literature today to be drawn to the fantastic plot, or to the amalgam of reality and fantasy. (The New Russian Prose)

But if I am not a criminal, I beg to be permitted to go abroad with my wife temporarily, for at least one year, with the right to return as soon as it becomes possible in our country to serve great ideas in literature without cringing before little men, as soon as there is at least a partial change in the prevailing view concerning the role of the literary artist. (“Letter To Stalin”)

What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons; we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless Why? and What next?(Literature, Revolution, and Entropy)

If human foolishness had been as carefully nurtured and cultivated as intelligence has been for centuries, perhaps it would have turned into something extremely precious.

How do you know nonsense isnt a good thing? if human nonsense had been nurtured and developed for centuries, just as intelligence has, then perhaps something extraordinarily previous could have come from it.

You can only love something that refuses to be mastered.

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

Let my notes, like the most sensitive seismograph, record the curve of even the most insignificant vibrations of my brain: for it is precisely such vibrations that are sometimes the forewarning of...

Tipsy, they tumbled early into bed - to get as much sleep as they could. So they would feel less hunger. The summer catch had been poor; there wasnt much food. They ate with care and looked sideways at the old: the old were gluttons, everybody knew it, and what was the good of feeding them? It wouldnt harm them to starve a little. The hungry dogs howled. The women rinsed the childrens bellies with hot water three times a day, so they wouldnt cry so much for food. The old starved silently. (The North)

But a thought swarmed in me; what if he, this yellow-eyed being – in his ridiculous, dirty bundle of trees, in his uncalculated life – is happier than us?

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

The government (or humanity) would not permit capital punishment for one man, but they permitted the murder of millions a little at a time.

Strictly speaking, she was out of order. This dear 0-, how shall 1 say it?The speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her tongue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts-at any rate not the reverse.

In the ancient world, this was understood by the Christians, our only (if very imperfect) predecessors: Humility is a virtue, pride a vice; We comes from God, I from the Devil.

The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy. (“Tomorrow”)

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

N-no-o, all that excitement, it wouldnt reach us, Timosha spoke gloomily. Were like the sunken city of Kitezh, living at the bottom of the lake. We do not hear a thing, and the water over us is muddy and sleepy. And on the surface, way above - why, everythings in flames, and the alarms are ringing. (“A Provincial Tale”)

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