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“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
#Dreamer #Literature #Rebel
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“Heretics are the only bitter remedy against the entropy of human thought.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Bitterness #Entropy #Remedy
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“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
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“There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Revolution #Finals #Infinite
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“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
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“Is it not clear, however, that bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of the fraction called happiness?”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Envy #Bliss #Fractions
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“We need writers who fear nothing. ("Our Goal")”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Goal #Needs #Fear Nothing
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“You're in bad shape. It looks like you're developing a soul.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Soul #Shapes #Looks
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“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.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Air #White #Water
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“And everyone must lose his mind, everyone must! The sooner the better! It is essential — I know it.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Mind #Essentials
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“All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Forever #Gold #Complexity
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“The most effective way of destroying art is the canonization of one given form. And one philosophy.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Art #Philosophy #Way
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“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
#Hate #Stronger
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“Literature is painting, architecture, and music.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Literature #Architecture #Painting
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“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
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“Love and hunger rule the world. Ergo, to rule the world, one must master love and hunger.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#World #Hunger #Masters
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“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
#Eye #Cutting #Healthy
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“Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Squares #Roots #World
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“And a question stirred within me: What if he, this yellow-eyed creature, in his disorderly, filthy mound of leaves, in his uncomputed life, is happier than we are?”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Yellow #What If #Life Is
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“She moved nearer, leaned her shoulder against me — and we were one, and something flowed from her into me, and I knew: this is how it must be. I knew it with every nerve, and every hair, every heartbeat, so sweet it verged on pain. And what joy to submit to this 'must'. A piece of iron must feel such joy as it submits to the precise, inevitable law that draws it to a magnet. Or a stone, thrown up, hesitating a moment, then plunging headlong back to earth. Or a man, after the final agony, taking a last deep breath — and dying.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Sweet #Pain #Men
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“You're in a bad way! Apparently, you have developed a soul.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Soul #Way
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“The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Freedom #Mean #Men
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“Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Lying #Animal #Finding Yourself
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“knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Infallibility
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“The moon ... is a mad woman holding up her dress So that her white belly shines. Haughty, Impregnable, Ridiculous, Silent and white as a debauched queen.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Queens #Moon #White
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“The knife is the most permanent, the most immortal, the most ingenious of man's creations. The knife was a guillotine; the knife is a universal means of resolving all knots...”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Mean #Men #Knives
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“How do you know that nonsense isn't a good thing? If human nonsense had been nurtured and developed for centuries, just as intelligence has, then perhaps something extraordinarily precious could have come from it.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Nonsense #Good Things #Century
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“Children are the only brave philosophers. And brave philosophers are, inevitably, children.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Children #Brave #Philosopher
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“The microspeed of the tongue ought to be always slightly less than the microspeed of the thoughts and certainly not ever the reverse.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Tongue #Reverse
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“It is not possible to build on negative emotions. Genuine literature will come only when we replace hatred for man with love for man.”
-- Yevgeny Zamyatin
#Men #Hatred #Literature
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