There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times.
Interpretation
Books have the power to create profound impact and influence over time, much like dynamite causes an immediate explosion.
This quote by Yevgeny Zamyatin highlights the powerful potential of literature and ideas. While dynamite delivers a singular, explosive force, a book can instigate repeated insights, discussions, and changes in thought, 'exploding' in impact each time it is read or referenced. The analogy emphasizes that knowledge and ideas can have a lasting, transformative influence on society that extends far beyond a momentary reaction.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literacy, you might use this quote to emphasize how books shape society.
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.
Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...
The lilac branches are bowed under the weight of the flowers: blooming is hard, and the most important thing is - to bloom. (βA Story About The Most Important Thingβ)
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.
Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.
When I was growing up, my mother would always say, 'It will go on your permanent record.' There was no 'permanent record.' If there were a 'permanent record,' I'd never be able to be a lawyer. I was such a bum, in elementary school and high school... There is a permanent record today and it's called the Internet.
Of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to mature. A child under the age of fifteen should confine its attention either to subjects like mathematics, in which errors of judgment are impossible, or to subjects in which they are not very dangerous, like languages, natural science, history, etc.
I think books are like people, in the sense that they'll turn up in your life when you most need them.
Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies β for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry β I say to myself, βWhat a pity I canβt buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.
You can't teach people anything. You can only draw out.
Give me a child for the first 5 years of his life and he will be mine forever.
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