Yevgeny Zamyatin

We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

“You see, even in our thoughts, no one is ever ‘one,’ but always ‘one of.’” (Pg 8)

“The microspeed of the tongue ought to be always slightly less than the microspeed of the thoughts and certainly not ever the reverse.” (Pg 9)

“I am not capable of joking – every joke, by function of its omissions, contains a lie.” (Pg 14)

“Aren’t human beings constructed as haphazardly as these ridiculous “apartments”? Human heads aren’t transparent, and their only tiny windows: the eyes.” (Pg 26)

“Clearly, to be original means to somehow stand out from others. Consequently, being original is to violate equality…” (Pg 27)

“Freedom and crime are so indissolubly connected.” (Pg 33)

“To destroy the few quickly is more reasonable than to give the many an opportunity to ruin themselves.” (Pg 49)

“All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.” (Pg 61)

“That means you love it. You’re afraid of it – because it is stronger than you. You hate it – because you are afraid of it. You love it – because you can’t conquer it yourself. You see, you can only love the unconquerable.” (Pg 64)

“How awful for you! By the looks of it, you’ve developed a soul.” (Pg 79)

“Mankind ceased to be wild beast when it built its first wall.” (Pg 83)

“Mathematics and death: neither makes mistakes.” (Pg 90)

“I can see that you need someone to take you by the hand and walk you through life.” (Pg 93)

“Everything that is great is simple.” (Pg 102)

“Human history goes up in circles, like an aero. The circles are different – some golden, some bloody – but they are all divided into 360 degrees. They start at zero and progress to 10, 20, 200, 360 degrees, and return to zero again.” (Pg 103)

“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.” (Pg 113)

“They say that there is a kind of flower that blooms only once a century. Then couldn’t there be one that flowers only once every thousand years – or once every ten thousand years? Maybe there are and we just don’t know it because today is itself that once-in-a-thousand-year moment.” (Pg 114)

“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.” (Pg 115)

“Who knows who you are… A person is a novel: you don’t know how it will end until the very last page. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be worth reading to the very end…” (Pg 141)

“Revolutions are infinite. Final things are for children because infinity scares children and it is important that children sleep peacefully at night…” (Pg 153)

“Here I saw, with my own eyes, that laughter was the most terrible weapon: you can kill anything with laughter – even murder itself.” (Pg 184)

“The sure sign of truth is its cruelty.” (Pg 187)

“Laughter comes in different colors. It is only the distant echo of an explosion occurring inside you…” (Pg 193)