If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.
Interpretation
Heresy and dissent are vital for progress and development.
Yevgeny Zamyatin highlights the importance of questioning established norms and beliefs in order to foster innovation and personal growth. Without opposing viewpoints, society risks stagnation; thus, creating challenges to conventions can lead to a healthier and more vibrant intellectual environment.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of free thinking and creativity in education.
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. (“A Story About The Most Important Thing”)
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.
Lord, give me firmness without hardness, steadfastness without dogmatism, love without weakness.
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.
Those who wish to promote the welfare of the people should advance in solidarity with them and select the path most suitable for them. Since the history of our people is different from that of the people of the West, the steps that the two peoples choose to take in order to advance must also be different.
To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays.
When we were kids we always used to say, ‘Okay, whoever dies first, get a message through.’ When John died, I thought, ‘Well, maybe we’ll get a message,’ because I know he knew the deal. I haven’t had a message from John.
Justice and peace can only thrive together, never apart.
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