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
Explosions are not comfortable.
comfortable
Heretics are the only bitter remedy against the entropy of human thought.
human thought bitter
If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.
health growth literature art heresy essential
Literature is painting, architecture, and music.
architecture literature writing music art creativity painting
The most effective way of destroying art is the canonization of one given form. And one philosophy.
philosophy literature writing art form
But if I am not a criminal, I beg to be permitted to go abroad with my wife temporarily, for at least one year, with the right to return as soon as it becomes possible in our country to serve great ideas in literature without cringing before little men, as soon as there is at least a partial change in the prevailing view concerning the role of the literary artist. (Letter To Stalin)
literature writing change men art ideas artist literary serve wife letter country great return criminal view
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.
culture truth lies lying animals intellect day lawyers wild imagine find lie speak forget privilege learned
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'm asking is: Have you ever actually believed it, believe it completely, believe not with your mind but with your body, actually felt that one day the fingers now holding this very piece of paper will be yellow and icy..?
death mortality
No matter how limited their powers of reason might have been. Still they must have understood that living like that was just murder, a capital crime - except it was slow, day-by-day murder. The government (or humanity) could not permit capital punishment for one man, but they permitted the murder of millions a little at a time. To kill one man - that is, to subtract 50 years from the sum of all human lives - that was a crime; but to subtract from the sum of all human lives 50,000,000 years - that was not a crime! No, really, isn't it funny? This problem in moral math could be solved in half a minute by any ten-year-old Number today, but they couldn't solve it. All their Kant's together couldn't solve it (because it never occurred to one of their Kant's to construct a system of scientific ethics - that is, one based on subtraction, addition, division, and multiplication).
philosophy death capital-punishment
Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith
faith science religion dystopia
The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.
freedom
Happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.
happiness freedom
Great Benefactor! How absurd- to want pain! Can there be anyone who doesn't know that pain is a negative quality, and that if you add them up it reduces the sum we call happiness? So it follows.. But.. Nothing follows. The slate is clean. Naked.
pain happiness
worth life people knowing endings novel
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.
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