Yevgeny Zamyatin Quotes

Quotes about:

• True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Dreamer

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2007). “We”, p.6, Modern Library

  54 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Mistake, Writing, Errors

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2007). “We”, p.10, Modern Library

  10 Copy quote

• You're in bad shape. It looks like you're developing a soul.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Soul, Looks, Shapes

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (1993). “We: New Edition”, p.86, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• Heretics are the only bitter remedy against the entropy of human thought.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Bitterness, Entropy, Remedy

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2007). “We”, p.9, Modern Library

  61 Copy quote

• Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Two, Choices, Alternatives

  "We". Book by Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1921.

  18 Copy quote

• There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Finals, Revolution, Infinite

  Yevgeny Zamyatin “We”, Two-Gunner Pulp Press

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Strong

  8 Copy quote

• The flame will cool tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow.... But someone must see this already today, and speak heretically today about tomorrow. Heretics are the only (bitter) remedy against the entropy of human thought.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Flames

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2007). “We”, p.9, Modern Library

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Fear, Book, Differences

  11 Copy quote

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

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Growth, Essentials, Literature

  10 Copy quote

• I prefer being wrong in my own way to being right in someone else's.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Literature

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Men

  "A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin". Book edited and translated by Mirra Ginsburg, "Tomorrow" (1919), 1970.

  5 Copy quote

• Individual consciousness is just sickness.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Consciousness, Sickness, Individual

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2010). “We: Introduction by Will Self”, p.113, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• Every genuine poet is necessarily a Columbus. America existed for centuries before Columbus but it was only Columbus who was able to track it down.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  America, Track, Poetry

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2010). “We: Introduction by Will Self”, p.59, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• The inner world: those spiritual apartments to which we are reluctant to admit strangers.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Art

  6 Copy quote

• Truth is the first thing that present-day literature lacks. The writer has drowned himself in lies, he is too accustomed to speak prudently, with a careful look over his shoulder.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Lying

  4 Copy quote

• Literature is painting, architecture, and music.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Literature, Architecture, Painting

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Children, Philosophy, Naked

  "On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters" by Yevgeny Zamyatin, translated by Mirra Ginsburg, in "A Soviet Heretic : Essays" by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1970), 1923.

  22 Copy quote

• All women are lips, nothing but lips.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Lips

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (1993). “We: New Edition”, p.73, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Reading, Men, People

  21 Copy quote

• Explosions are not comfortable.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Preparation, Explosions, Comfortable

  7 Copy quote

• There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Past

  8 Copy quote

• And why do you think that foolishness is bad? 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.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Thinking, Century, Humans

  5 Copy quote

• To the feudal aristocracy and the aristocracy of the spirit, nobility derives from diametrically opposite sources. The glory of the feudal aristocrat is in being a link in the longest possible chain of ancestors. The glory of the aristocrat of the spirit is in having no ancestors - or having as few as possible. If an artist is his own ancestor, if he has only descendents, he enters history as a genius; if he has few ancestors, or is related to them distantly, he enters history as a talent.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Opposites

  4 Copy quote

• We comes from God, I from the Devil.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Devil

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (1993). “We: New Edition”, p.115, Penguin

  116 Copy quote

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