Quotes from We

“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, quote from 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, quote from We

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox—the single most worthy path of the fearless mind . . . .”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from We

“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, quote from We

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Popular quotes

“You were correct, for all men have within them both that which is dark and that which is light.
A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were. His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires . . .
his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that
which was old, but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream.
Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure. Always he mourns that
which is gone and fears some part of that which is new. Reason opposes tradition. Emotions oppose the
restrictions his fellow men lay upon him. Always, from the friction of these things, there arises the
thing you called the curse of man and mocked; guilt!”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from Lord of Light

“Odd thing, ain't it... you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Jingo

“You need to screw up to learn. You need to experience to create greatness. It’s not just about bowls, you

know.”
― Laurie Faria Stolarz, quote from Deadly Little Secret

“Can’t stop a Nazi with a lawbook.”
― Herman Wouk, quote from The Caine Mutiny

“Because nothing between human beings is uncomplicated and there's no way to speak of human beings without simplifying and misrepresenting them.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from We Were the Mulvaneys

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.