Yevgeny Zamyatin quotes

Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Russian author and playwright known for his dystopian novel, "We." Born in 1884, Zamyatin was a prominent figure in the early 20th-century Russian literary scene. His work has inspired countless authors and filmmakers, including George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Zamyatin's unique blend of science fiction and social commentary continues to resonate with audiences today. Learn more about this groundbreaking writer and his influential works.

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

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

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.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

What is strangest of all, most unnatural of all, is that the finger hasn't got the slightest desire to be on the hand, to be with the others.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

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

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

The whole world is one immense woman, and we are in her very womb, we are not yet born, we are joyfully ripening.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

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.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

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

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

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

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

It is said there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. Why should there not be some that bloom once in a thousand, in ten thousand years? Perhaps we never know about them simply because this 'once in a thousand years' has come today.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

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

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?

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

Here I saw, with my own eyes, that laughter was the most terrible weapon: you can kill anything with laughter – even murder itself.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

Her smile was a bite, and I was its target.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

Everything used to revolve around the sun; now I knew it all revolved around me – slowly, blissfully, squinting its eyes.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

Children are the only bold philosophers. And bold philosophers will always be children. So you're right, it's a child's question, just as it should be.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

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

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

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

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

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

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

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

We need writers who fear nothing.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

Literature is painting, architecture, and music.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

Explosions are not comfortable.

- Yevgeny Zamyatin

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

- Yevgeny Zamyatin