We Quotes

“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, We

“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, We

“There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“You're in a bad way! Apparently, you have developed a soul.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“And everyone must lose his mind, everyone must! The sooner the better! It is essential — I know it.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“...Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative...”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“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, We

“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.”
― Zamyatin, We

“The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“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, We

“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, We

“knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“We comes from God, I from the Devil.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“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, We

“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, We

“Her smile was a bite, and I was its target.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“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, We

“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, We

“And happiness...Well, after all, desires torment us, don't they? And, clearly, happiness is when there are no more desires, not one...What a mistake, what ridiculous prejudice it's been to have marked happiness always with a plus sign. Absolute happiness should, of course, carry a minus sign — the divine minus.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“What is it to you if I don't want others to want for me, if I want to want myself — if I want the impossible...”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“A person is like a novel: Up to the very last page you don't know how it's going to end. Otherwise, there'd be no point in reading...”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“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, We

“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, We

“But you can't plead with autumn. No. The midnight wind stalked through the woods, hooted to frighten you, swept everything away for the approaching winter, whirled the leaves. ("The North")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturabtion … whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“You don't look normal, dear. You look sick. Because sick and not normal are the same thing. You're destroying yourself, and no one is going to tell you that - no one.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Everyone has to go mad, it's essential fir everyone to go mad - as soon as possible! It's essential - I know.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We