"Revolution is everywhere, in everything. It is infinite. There is no final revolution, no final number. The social revolution is only one of an infinite number of numbers. The law of revolution is not a social law, but an immeasureably greater one. It is a cosmic, universal law - like the laws of the conservation of energy and of the dissipation of energy (entrophy)..."

[....]

"Harmful literature is more useful than useful literature, for it is antientrophic, it is a means of combating calcification... It is utopian, absurd... It is right 150 years later."

[....]

The Revolution does not need dogs who "sit up" in expectation of a handout or because the fear the whip. Nor does it need trainers of such dogs. It needs writers who fear nothing... It needs writers in whom the Revolution awakens a true organic echo. And it does not matter if this echo is individual... if a writer ignores such-and-such a paragraph adapted at such-and-such a conference. What matters is that his work is sincere, that it leads the reader forward... that it disturb the reader rather than reassure and lull his mind.... But where forward? And how far forward? The father the better.... Reduction of prices, better sanitation on the cities...all this is very good... I can imagine an excellent newspaper article on these topics (an article that will be forgotten the next day). But I find it difficult to imagine a work by Leo Tolstoy or Romain Rolland based on the improvement of sanitation."

Selections from essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin, author of We