The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...
Interpretation
This quote suggests that progress and innovation are often driven by those who challenge traditional beliefs.
In this quote, Yevgeny Zamyatin asserts that the world owes its vitality and advancement to individuals who dare to challenge established norms and beliefs—heretics. He refers to notable figures such as Christ, Copernicus, and Tolstoy, who each disrupted conventional thinking in their respective fields. Zamyatin celebrates heresy as a necessary force that fosters change and promotes new ideas, emphasizing that innovation comes from questioning and diverging from accepted truths.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of free thought in 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 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.
You're in a bad way! Apparently, you have developed a soul.
I act because I can't seem to live with myself if I do not. I don't know any other way to be. It isn't something you can explain; it is just something that you do; it is something that you are.
What is the ideal for mental health, then? A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough to follow its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not to take the lives of others to justify itself.
Remember what is unbecoming to do is also unbecoming to speak of.
When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?
Every month, it is woman's fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.
I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property.
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