Top 120 Yevgeny Zamyatin Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Do you believe that you will die? Yes man is mortal I am a man ergo... no that isn’t what I mean. I know that you know that. What I am asking is, have you ever actually believed it? Believed it completely? Believed not with your mind but with your body? Actually felt that one the fingers now holding this very piece of paper will be icy and yellow? No, of course you don’t believe it. Which is the reason why up until now you haven’t jumped from the tenth floor to the pavement.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

53. “The ancient God created the old man, capable of erring – thus he erred himself.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

54. “Explosions are not comfortable.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

55. “The inner world: those spiritual apartments to which we are reluctant to admit strangers.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

56. “What is it that people beg for, dream about, torment themselves for, from the time they leave swaddling clothes? They want someone to tell them, once and for all, what happiness is – and then to bind them to that happiness with a chain.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

57. “Philosophers of genius, children, and the people are equally wise – because they ask equally foolish questions. Foolish to a civilized man who has a well-furnished European apartment, with an excellent toilet, and a well-furnished dogma.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

58. “But, my dear friends, you must try to think a little now – it will help matters.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

59. “How awful for you! By the looks of it, you’ve developed a soul.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

60. “Oh, to the deuce with knowledge. Your much-heralded knowledge is but a form of cowardice. It is a fact! Yes, you want to encircle the infinite with a wall, and you fear to cast a glance behind the wall.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

61. “We must all go insane – as soon as possible go insane.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

62. “Dogma, static positions, consonance – all these are obstacles to catching the disease of art, at least in its more complex forms.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

63. “And, like children, you will swallow without protest everything bitter I shall give you only when it is carefully coated with the thick syrup of adventure.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

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

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

65. “The myth about the angel who rebelled against his Lord is the most beautiful of all myths, the proudest, the most revolutionary, the most immortal of them all.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

66. “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

67. “The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

68. “All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

69. “Then how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

70. “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

71. “You’re in bad shape. It looks like you’re developing a soul.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

72. “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

73. “Name me the final number, the highest, the greatest. But that’s absurd! If the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a final number? Then how can you speak of a final revolution? There is no final one. Revolutions are infinite.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

74. “Freedom and crime are linked as indivisibly as... well, as the motion of the aero and its speed: when its speed equals zero, it does not move; when man’s freedom equals zero, he commits no crimes. That is clear. The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

75. “By complex ways, by looking deep into the dark well of the human soul, full of filth, somewhere at the very bottom of it Chekhov at last found his faith. And this faith turned out to be faith in man, in the power of human progress. And man became his god.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

76. “I feel myself. But it’s only the eye with a lash in it, the swollen finger, the infected tooth that feels itself, is conscious of its own individual being. The healthy eye or finger or tooth doesn’t seem to exist. So it’s clear, isn’t it? Self-consciousness is just a disease.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

77. “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...”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

78. “It has never occurred to me before, but this is truly how it is: all of us on earth walk constantly over a seething, scarlet sea of flame, hidden below, in the belly of the earth. We never think of it. But what if the thin crust under our feet should turn into glass and we should suddenly see?”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

79. “The latest literary discussions reflect a struggle between two artistic methods – romanticism and realism, with the latter clearly ascendant for the time being.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

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

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

81. “Beauty? Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: Because this is a non-free movement, because the whole deep meaning of dance is in absolute, aesthetic subordination, ideal unfreedom.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

82. “All women are lips, nothing but lips. Some pink, firmly round – a ring, a tender protection against the whole world. But these: a second ago they did not exist, and now – a knife slit – and the sweet blood will drip down.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

83. “I looked silently at her lips. All women are lips, all lips. Some are pink and firmly round: a ring, a tender guardrail from the whole world. And then there are these ones: a second ago they weren’t here, and just now – like a knife-slit – they are here, still dripping sweet blood.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

84. “One must remember that mathematics is like death, never makes mistakes, never plays tricks. If we are unable to see those irrational curves or solids, it only means that they inevitably possess a whole immense world somewhere beneath the surface of our life...”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

85. “The elections themselves have rather a symbolic meaning. They remind us that we are a united, powerful organism of millions of cells, that – to use the language of the “gospel” of the ancients – we are a united church. The history of the United State knows not a single case in which upon this solemn day even a solitary voice has dared to violate the magnificent unison. They.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

86. “Then you love it. For if you fear it because it is stronger than you, hate it because you fear it, you love it. For you cannot subject it to yourself. One loves only the things one cannot conquer.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

87. “Children are the only bold philosophers. And bold philosophers are invariably children. Exactly, just like children, we must always ask, ‘And what next?”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

88. “Un medic adevarat incepe sa-l trateze pe om cand acesta e inca sanatos, cand omul se va imbolnavi abia maine, poimaine, peste o saptamana.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

89. “Yesterday, there was a Tzar and there were slaves. Today, there is no Tzar, but the slaves are still here. Tomorrow there will be only Tzars. We walk forward in the name of the free man of tomorrow, the Tzar of tomorrow. We have gone through the epoch when the masses were oppressed. We are now going through the epoch when the individual is oppressed in the name of the masses.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

90. “It’s clear: if there is no good reason for enviousness, the denominator of the fraction of happiness is brought to zero and the fraction is transformed into a glorious infinity.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

91. “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...”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

92. “Our gods are here, below, with us – in the office, the kitchen, the workshop, the toilet; the gods have become like us. Ergo, we have become as gods.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

93. “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

94. “When we remove the snowdrift piled up over Chekhov in recent years, we uncover a man profoundly agitated by social problems; a writer whose social ideals are the same as those we live by; a philosophy of the divinity of man, of fervent faith in man – the faith that moves mountains.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

95. “Now, think of a square, a living, beautiful square. And imagine that it must tell you about itself, about its life. You understand, a square would scarcely ever think of telling you that all its four angles are equal: this has become so natural, so ordinary to it that it’s simply no longer consciously aware of it. And so with me: I find myself continually in this square’s position.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

96. “I had never known this before, but now I do and so do you: Laughter comes in different colours. It is only the distant echo of an explosion inside you. It might come in holiday colours – red, blue, golden rockets. or it might be the bits of a human body flying out...”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

97. “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

98. “I am imprudent, I am sick, I have a soul, I am a microbe. But isn’t blooming a sickness? Doesn’t it hurt when a bud splits open?”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

99. “The speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her toungue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts -at any rate not the reverse.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

100. “And tomorrow... what? Nobody knows. You understand? Neither I nor anyone else knows. It’s unknown. You understand it’s come to an end, everything that was known? Now it’ll be new, never before seen or imagined.”

— Yevgeny Zamyatin