"True literature can only exist when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics."

These were the words of Yevgeny Zamyatin.

1984 by George Orwell; Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; and Anthem by Ayn Rand were all inspired by this Russian writer's 1924 novel: We.
In fact, this book is the grandfather of the entire dystopian genre. If you're an Orwell fan, it's worth checking it out. If you're not, here are a few snippets that I picked out special. If you plan on reading it stop here. If you're not sure, read on. Open wide here comes a heaping spoonful of great food-for-thought:

"The knife is the strongest, the most immortal, the most brilliant of man's creations; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots."

"All of us on earth walk constantly over a seething, scarlet sea of flame, hidden below, in the belly of the earth. We never think of it. But what if the thin crust under our feet should turn to glass and we should suddenly see?"

"Man ceased to be a wild animal only when he built the first wall."

"All unknowns are organically inimical to man, Homo Sapiens is human, in the full sense of the word, only when his grammar is entirely free of question marks."

"I do not want anyone to want for me ---I want to want for myself"

"True, algebraic love of humanity is inevitably inhuman; and the inevitable mark of truth is---its cruelty. Just as the inevitable mark of fire is that it burns."

"There is no final revolution. Revolutions are infinite."