Yevgeny Zamyatin

“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.”

“Cruel', O'Kelly laughed, 'it's cruel to tell children the truth. If anything convinces me of God's mercy, then it's his gift of making us unable to lie.”

“True literature can exist only when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics.”

“I turned. She was in a light, saffron-yellow dress of the ancient model. This was a thousand times more cruel than if she had worn nothing.”

“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. I became glass. I saw — within myself.”

“At night numbers must sleep; it is their duty, just as it is their duty to work in the daytime. Not sleeping at night is a criminal offense.”

“Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.”

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

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

“The old, slow, creaking descriptions are a thing of the past; today the rule is brevity — but every word must be supercharged, high-voltage. We must compress into a single second what was held before in a sixty-second minute.”

“We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed. ("X")”

“But clouds bellied out in the sultry heat, the sky cracked open with a crimson gash, spewed flame-and the ancient forest began to smoke. By morning there was a mass of booming, fiery tongues, a hissing, crashing, howling all around, half the sky black with smoke, and the bloodied sun just barely visible.”

“This is how it happens: the sun flies slower and slower, until it hangs suspended, motionless. And everything is locked, imbedded for eternity in greenish glass.”