We

by Yevgeny Zamyatin

great prose poem on the fate that might befall all of us if we surrender our individual selves to some collective dream of technology and fail in the vigilance that is the price of freedom.

Your mission is to subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the unknown beings who live on other planets, and who are perhaps still in the primitive state of freedom.

If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically faultless happiness, our duty will be to force them to be happy. But before we take up arms, we shall try the power of words.

the instinct of non-freedom has been characteristic of human nature from ancient times,

The woman had upon me a disagreeable effect, like an irrational component of an equation which you cannot eliminate.

I have had opportunity to read and hear many improbable things about those times when human beings still lived in the state of freedom, that is, an unorganized primitive state.

It didn’t enter the heads of all their Kants to build a system of scientific ethics, that is, ethics based on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

They were able to compose only by bringing themselves to strokes of inspiration,—an extinct form of epilepsy.

rushed to the house-office, handed over to the controller on duty my pink ticket and received a certificate permitting the use of the curtains. This right exists in our State only for the sexual days.

We have nothing to conceal from one another; besides, this mode of living makes the difficult and exalted task of the Guardians much easier.

ancient sage once said a clever thing (accidentally, beyond doubt). He said, “Love and Hunger rule the world.” Consequently, to dominate the world, man had to win a victory over hunger after paying a very high price.

Naturally, having conquered hunger (that is, algebraically speaking, having achieved the total of bodily welfare), the United State directed its attack against the second ruler of the world, against love.

Liberation! It is remarkable how persistent human criminal instincts are! I use deliberately the word “criminal,” for freedom and crime are as closely related

The way to rid man of criminality is to rid him of freedom.

Their god gave them nothing but eternal, torturing seeking; our god gives us absolute truth, that is, he has rid us of any kind of doubt.

All this was simple; all of us were familiar with the phenomenon, dissociation of matter,—yes, the splitting of the atoms of the human body!

I turned around. She was dressed in a saffron- yellow dress of an ancient style.This was a thousand times worse than if she had not been dressed at all. Two sharp points, through the thin tissue glowing with rosiness, two burning embers piercing through ashes; two tender, round knees….

There were two in paradise and the choice was offered to them: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness.

Naturally, they longed for centuries afterwards for fetters, for the fetters of yore. This was the meaning of their world- weariness,

For all this preserves our non- freedom, that is, our happiness. In our place those ancients would indulge in discussions, deliberations, etc. They would break their heads trying to make out what was moral or unmoral.

One loves only the things one cannot conquer.”