There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times.
Interpretation
Books have the power to create profound impact and influence over time, much like dynamite causes an immediate explosion.
This quote by Yevgeny Zamyatin highlights the powerful potential of literature and ideas. While dynamite delivers a singular, explosive force, a book can instigate repeated insights, discussions, and changes in thought, 'exploding' in impact each time it is read or referenced. The analogy emphasizes that knowledge and ideas can have a lasting, transformative influence on society that extends far beyond a momentary reaction.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literacy, you might use this quote to emphasize how books shape 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 world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...
The lilac branches are bowed under the weight of the flowers: blooming is hard, and the most important thing is - to bloom. (βA Story About The Most Important Thingβ)
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.
So many young decorators are trying to reinvent the wheel, and the results are sometimes very dubious. They're striving to do things that have never been done before. Quite often it is done without authority, without knowledge, and without a background in taste. They need to be educated about the past, and they need a richer vocabulary.
Let no man despise the oracles of books! A book is a dead man, a sort of mummy, embowelled and embalmed, but that once had flesh and motion and a boundless variety of determinations and actions.
What is important for kids to learn is that no matter how much money they have, earn, win, or inherit, they need to know how to spend it, how to save it, and how to give it to others in need. This is what handling money is about, and this is why we give kids an allowance.
Here was one place where I could find out who I was and what I was going to become. And that was the public library.
As regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.
My belief is that nothing that can be expressed by mathematics cannot be expressed by careful use of literary words.
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