We quotes

I feel my cheeks are burning as I write this. To integrate the colossal, universal equation! To unbend the wild curve, to straighten it out to a tangent—to a straight line!

For the United State is a straight line, a great, divine, precise, wise line, the wisest of lines!

I, D-503, the builder of the Integral, I am only one of the many mathematicians of the United State. My pen, which is accustomed to figures, is unable to express the march and rhythm of consonance;

I suddenly perceived all the music, all the beauty, of this colossal, of this mechanical ballet, illumined by light blue rays of sunshine. Then the thought came: why beautiful? Why is a dance beautiful? Answer: because it is an unfree movement.

Because the deep meaning of the dance is contained in its absolute, ecstatic submission, in the ideal non-freedom.

If it is true that our ancestors would abandon themselves in dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades) then it means only one thing:

And it seemed to me that not past generations, but I myself, had won a victory over the old god and the old life, that I myself had created all this.

I felt like a tower: I was afraid to move my elbow, lest the walls, the cupola and the machines should fall to pieces.

Then without warning—a jump through centuries: I remembered (apparently through an association by contrast) a picture in the museum, a picture of an avenue of the twentieth century, a thundering many-colored confusion of men, wheels, animals, billboards, trees, colors, and birds.

It was a remarkable intersection of thoughts. She said almost in the same words the things I wrote down before the walk! Do you understand? Even the thoughts!

It is because nobody is one, but one of.

We are all so much alike—

It is only a burden, an unnecessary burden.” I am sure that you will feel the same, if I tell you that not one of us has ever stepped beyond the Green Wall since the Two Hundred Years’ War.

But, dear readers, you must think, at least a little. It helps.

It is clear that the history of mankind as far as our knowledge goes, is a history of the transition from nomadic forms to more sedentary ones.

When the Two Hundred Years’ War had destroyed all the roads which later were overgrown with grass, it was probably very difficult at first. It seemed uncomfortable to live in cities which were cut off from each other by green debris. But what of it?

Man soon after he lost his tail probably did not learn at once how to chase away flies without its help.

I am almost sure that at first he was even lonesome without his tail, but now, can you imagine yourself with a tail? Or can you imagine yourself walking in the street naked, without clothes? (It is possible you go without clothes still.)

Or can you imagine yourself walking in the street naked, without clothes? (It is possible you go without clothes still.) Here we have the same case.

I cannot imagine a city which is not clad with a Green Wall; I cannot imagine a life which is not clad with the figures of our Tables.

Tables. … Now even, purple figures look at me austerely yet kindly from the golden background of the wall.

if the speed of an aero equals zero, the aero is motionless; if human liberty is equal to zero, man does not commit any crime. That is clear.

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

No sooner did we rid ourselves of freedom (in the cosmic sense centuries are only a “no sooner”), than suddenly some unknown pitiful degenerates. … No, I cannot understand why I did not go immediately yesterday to the Bureau of the Guardians.

“

Heh, to the deuce with knowledge. Your much-heralded knowledge is but a form of cowardice.

It is a fact! Yes, you want to encircle the infinite with a wall and you fear to cast a glance behind the wall. Yes, sir! And if ever you should glance beyond the wall you would be dazzled and close your eyes—yes—”

To judge by the descriptions which reach us from the ancients, they felt somewhat like this during their “Church services,” but they served their nonsensical unknown god; we serve our rational god, whom we most thoroughly know.

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.

Their god did not invent anything cleverer than sacrificing oneself, nobody knows what for; we bring to our god, The United State, a quiet, rational, carefully thought-out sacrifice.

The ancients “knew” that the greatest, bored skeptic—their God, lived there. We know that crystalline, blue, naked, indecent Nothing is there. I do not know any more what is there. I have learned too many things of late.

Knowledge, self-confident knowledge which is sure that it is faultless, is faith.

I had firm faith in myself; I believed that I knew all about myself. But then. … I look in the mirror.

“You see, it is the ancient legend of paradise.” (p like a fountain.) “That legend referred to us of today, did it not? Yes. Only think of it, think of it a moment!

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

No other choice. Tertium non datur. They, fools that they were, chose freedom. Naturally, they longed for centuries afterwards for fetters, for the fetters of yore. This was the meaning of their world-weariness, Weltschmerz. For centuries! And only we found a way to regain happiness.

We obtained electricity from the amorous whisper of the waves! We made a domestic animal out of that sparkling, foaming, rabid one! And in the same manner we domesticated and harnessed the wild element of poetry.

Now poetry is no longer the unpardonable whistling of nightingales but a State Service! Poetry is a commodity.

Our famous “Mathematical Norms”! Without them in our schools, how could we love so sincerely and dearly our four rules of arithmetic? And “Thorns!” This is a classical image: the Guardians are thorns about a rose; thorns that guard our tender State-Flower from coarse hands.

Our gods are here, below. They are with us in the Bureau, in the kitchen, in the shops, in the restrooms.

The gods have become like us, ergo we have become like gods.

And we shall come to you, my unknown readers on another planet, we shall come to you to make your life as godlike, as rational and as correct as ours. …

I glanced at her lips in silence.

All women are lips, lips only. Some are rosy lips, tense and round, a ring, a tender fence separating one from the world.

But these! A second ago they were not here, and suddenly … the slash of a knife! I seemed to see even the dripping sweet blood. …

“Then you love it. For if you fear it because it is stronger than you, hate it because you fear it, you love it.

For you cannot subject it to yourself. One loves only the things one cannot conquer.

”

I-330 took the wheel as she had done before, pressed the starter and we tore away from the earth. We soared. Behind us the golden haze; the Sun. The thin, blade-like profile of the doctor seemed to me suddenly so dear, so beloved.

Formerly I knew everything was revolving around the Sun. Now I knew everything was revolving around me.

Slowly, blissfully, with half-closed eyes. …

“Yes, it is too bad.

Apparently a soul has formed in you.

”

“Why? Well, why don’t we grow feathers or wings, but only shoulder blades, bases for wings? We have aeros; wings would only be in the way.

Wings are needed in order to fly, but we don’t need to fly anywhere. We have arrived at the terminus.

We have found what we wanted. Is that not so?”

it seemed as though it would splash over me and that from a man, from the finest and most precise mechanism which I am, I would be transformed into. … But fortunately there was the Green Wall between me and that wild green sea.

Oh, how great and divinely limiting is the wisdom of walls and bars!

This Green Wall is I think the greatest invention ever conceived. Man ceased to be a wild animal the day he built the first wall;

The blunt snout of some unknown beast was to be seen dimly through the glass of the Wall; its yellow eyes kept repeating the same thought which remained incomprehensible to me. We looked into each other’s eyes for a long while.

Eyes are shafts which lead from the superficial world into a world which is beneath the surface.

A thought awoke in me: “what if that yellow-eyed one, sitting there on that absurd dirty heap of leaves, is happier than I, in his life which cannot be calculated in figures!” I waved my hand.

The horrifying part of the situation is that there exist such curves or solids; unseen by us they do exist, they must, inevitably; for in mathematics as on a screen, strange sharp shadows appear before us.

One must remember that mathematics like death, never makes mistakes, never plays tricks.

If we are unable to see those irrational curves or solids, it only means that they inevitably possess a whole immense world somewhere beneath the surface of our life. …

Not a man shrank. We and our lathes continued our rectilinear or curved motions with the same sparkling and polished precision as before, as if nothing had happened. As a matter of fact, what did happen?

A dozen Numbers represent hardly one hundred millionth part of the United State. For practical consideration, that is but an infinitesimal of the third order.

That pity, a result of arithmetical ignorance, was known to the ancients; to us it seems absurd.

Now if we put a drop of acid on the idea of “right.” … Even the ancients (the most mature of them) knew that the source of right was—might!

Right is a function of might.

Here we have our scale: on the one side an ounce, on the other a ton. On one side “I,” on the other “we,” the United State. Is it not clear?

a blue mass covered with rainbow sparkles! Suns!—a hundred suns! A million rainbows! What does it matter if we are separated from the other, black side of the zero rock only by the thickness of a blade?

A knife is the most solid, the most immortal, the most inspired invention of man.

The knife served on the guillotine. The knife is the universal tool for cutting knots. The way of paradoxes follows its sharp edge, the only way becoming to a fearless mind. …

To understand, to discover these unknowns as the author of these records, I feel it simply my duty. Moreover, the unknown is naturally the enemy of man.

And Homo Sapiens only then becomes Man in the complete sense of the word, when his punctuation includes no question marks, only exclamation points, commas and periods.

Thus, guided by what seems to me simply my duty as an author, I took an aero today at sixteen o’clock and went to the Ancient House. A strong wind was blowing against me.

I was walking, keeping step with the others yet separated from them. I was still trembling from the emotion just felt, like a bridge over which a thundering ancient steel train has passed a moment before. I felt myself.

To feel one’s self, to be conscious of one’s personality, is the lot of an eye inflamed by a cinder, or an infected finger, or a bad tooth.

A healthy eye, or finger, or tooth is not felt; it is nonexistent as it were. Is it not clear then, that consciousness of oneself is a sickness?

“

And why should you think that foolishness is not fine? If we had taken pains to educate human foolishness through centuries, as we have done with our intelligence, it might perhaps have been transformed into something very precious.

”

After all, there is some logic—a peculiar logic of today, in this state of being a point.

A point has more unknowns than any other entity. If a point should start to move, it might become thousands of curves, or hundreds of solids.

I was afraid to budge. What might I have become if I had moved? It seemed to me that everybody like myself was afraid now of even the most minute of motions.

“How do I know?

Man is like a novel: up to the last page one does not know what the end will be. It would not be worth reading otherwise.

”

With you it was worse; numbers covered your bodies; numbers crawled over you like lice. One ought to strip you of everything, and naked you ought to be driven into the woods.

You ought to learn how to tremble with fear, with joy, with wild anger, with cold; you should pray to fire!

And we Mephi, we want. …”

“Mephi? It is from Mephisto. You remember, there on the rock, the figure of the youth? Or, no. I shall explain it to you in your own language and you will understand better: there are two forces in the world, entropy and energy.

One leads into blessed quietude, to happy equilibrium, the other to the destruction of equilibrium, to torturingly perpetual motion.

Our, or rather your ancestors, the Christians, worshipped entropy like a God. But we are not Christians, we. …”

“

And why then do you think there is a last revolution? There is no last revolution, their number is infinite.

… The ‘last one’ is a children’s story. Children are afraid of the infinite, and it is necessary that children should not be frightened, so that they may sleep through the night.”

“And why then do you think there is a last revolution? There is no last revolution, their number is infinite. … The ‘last one’ is a children’s story.

Children are afraid of the infinite, and it is necessary that children should not be frightened, so that they may sleep through the night.

”

“

Children are the only courageous philosophers. And courageous philosophers are invariably children.

One ought always to ask like children, ‘what further’?”

“Ah, ‘evenly!’ ‘Everywhere!’ That is the point, entropy! Psychological entropy.

Don’t you as a mathematician know that only differences (only differences!), in temperature, only thermic contrasts make for life?

And if all over the world there are evenly warm or evenly cold bodies, they must be pushed off! … in order to get flame, explosions! And we shall push! …”

Inside, the benches were stacked along the walls. In the middle, tables covered with snow-white glass sheets, with pink stains of sunny blood on the white. … There was foreshadowed in all that some unknown and therefore alarming tomorrow.

It is unnatural for a thinking and seeing human being to live among irregularities, unknowns, X’s.

If suddenly your eyes were covered with a bandage and you were let go to feel around, to stumble, ever aware that somewhere very close to you there is the borderline, one step only and nothing but a compressed, smothered piece of flesh will be …

you know it. But I ask: has it ever happened that you actually believed it? Believed definitely, believed not with your reason but with your body, that you actually felt that some day those fingers which now hold this page, will become yellow, icy? …

No, of course you cannot believe this. That is why you have not jumped from the tenth floor to the pavement before now, that is why you eat, turn over these pages, shave, smile, write.

This very thing, yes, exactly this is alive in me today.

An absurd feeling yet it was there; I really must! Absurd, because this “duty” of mine was nothing but another crime.

Absurd, because white and black cannot be one, duty and crime cannot coincide.

Or perhaps there is no black and white in life, but everything depends upon the first logical premise? If the premise is that I unlawfully gave her a child. …

… Then instantaneously a cotton curtain of cloud. … We pierced it, and there was the sun and the blue sky! Seconds, minutes, miles—the blue was hardening, fast filling with darkness; like drops of cold silver sweat appeared the stars. …

A sad, unbearably bright, black, starry, sunny night.

… As if one had become deaf, one still saw that the pipes were roaring, but one only saw, dead silence all about. The sun was mute. It was natural, of course. One might have expected it; we were beyond the terrestrial atmosphere.

I felt I was growing pale—and that they would soon notice it. But the phonograph within me performed the prescribed fifty chewing movements for every bite.

I locked myself into myself as though into an opaque house; I threw up a heap of rocks before my door and lowered the window-blinds.

…

“No. Go up to them. There they will cure you; there they will overfeed you with that leavened happiness. Satiated, you will slumber peacefully, organized, keeping time and snoring sweetly.

Is it possible that you do not yet hear that great symphony of snoring?

Foolish people! Don’t you realize that they want to liberate you from these gnawing, worm-like, torturing question marks? And you remain standing here and listening to me? Quick! Up! To the Great Operation! What is your concern, if I remain here alone?

And you remain standing here and listening to me? Quick! Up! To the Great Operation! What is your concern, if I remain here alone? What does it matter to you if I want to struggle, hopelessly struggle? So much the better!

What does it matter to you that I do not want others to desire for me? I want to desire for myself.

If I desire the impossible. …”

This was so unexpected and so stupid that I burst out laughing. Immediately the tense spring within me broke and my hand weakened and the piston fell to the floor.

Here I learned from personal experience that laughter is the most terrible of weapons; you can kill anything with laughter, even murder.

I sat at my table and laughed desperately; I saw no way out of that absurd situation. I don’t know what would have been the end if things had run their natural course, for suddenly a new factor in the arithmetical chain: the telephone rang.

Yet (you must understand this!), yet this God was for centuries glorified as the God of love! Absurd? Oh, no. Just the contrary. It is rather a patent for the imperishable wisdom of man, written in blood.

Even at the time when he still was wild and hairy man knew that real, algebraic love for humanity must inevitably be inhuman, and that the inevitable mark of truth is cruelty, just as the inevitable mark of fire is its property of causing the sensation of burning.

Could you show me a fire that would not hurt? Well, prove now your point! Proceed! Argue!”

… time when he still was wild and hairy man knew that real, algebraic love for humanity must inevitably be inhuman, and that the inevitable mark of truth is cruelty, just as the inevitable mark of fire is its property of causing the sensation of burning.

Could you show me a fire that would not hurt?

Well, prove now your point! Proceed! Argue!”

Somehow I felt they should not lie there on the floor and be trodden upon. I gathered a handful of them, put them on the table and carefully smoothed them out, glanced at them and … laughed aloud!

I never knew it before but now I know, and you too, know, that laughter may be of different colors.

It is but a distant echo of an explosion within us; it may be the echo of a holiday, red, blue and golden fireworks, or at times it may represent pieces of human flesh exploded into the air. …