32 quotes
Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.
We (1921)
No revolution, no heresy is comfortable or easy. For it is a leap, it is a break in the smooth evolutionary curve, and a break is a wound, a pain.
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
A new form is not intelligible to everyone; many find it difficult. Perhaps. The ordinary, the banal is, of course, simpler, more pleasant, more comfortable.
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Yesterday, there was a tsar, and there were slaves; today there is no tsar, but the slaves remain; tomorrow there will be only tsars. We march in the name of tomorrow's free man — the royal man.
Tomorrow (1919)
I turned. She was in a light, saffron-yellow dress of the ancient model. This was a thousand times more cruel than if she had worn nothing.
We (1921)
This is the path of evolution — until a new heresy explodes the crush of dogma and all the edifices of the most enduring stone which have been raised upon it.
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Of course, to wound oneself is difficult, even dangerous. But for those who are alive, living today as yesterday and yesterday as today is still more difficult.
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Ask point blank: What is revolution?
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
The law of revolution is red, fiery, deadly; but this death means the birth of new life, a new star. And the law of entropy is cold, ice blue, like the icy interplanetary infinities. The flame turns from red to an even, warm pink, no longer deadly, but comfortable.
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
The two inhabitants of Paradise were given the opportunity to choose: happiness without freedom or freedom without happiness; tertium non datur. And they, donkeys, chose freedom: so what? You understand: then they regretted the chains for centuries.
We (1921)
To literature today the plane surface of daily life is what the earth is to an airplane — a mere runway from which to take off, in order to rise aloft, from daily life to the realities of being, to philosophy, to the fantastic.
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
The old, slow, creaking descriptions are a thing of the past; today the rule is brevity — but every word must be supercharged, high-voltage. We must compress into a single second what was held before in a sixty-second minute.
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)