"Remember the scene: a blue hill, a cross, a sword. Some are up on top, bespattered with blood, nailing the body to the cross; others are below, bespattered with tears, looking on. Does it not strike you that those above are playing the most difficult, the most important role of all? If it weren't for them, would this magnificent tragedy ever have been mounted? They were hissed by the vulgar crowd, but this very fact should earn them even more munificent rewards from God, the author of the tragedy. And this same Christian, all-merciful God- the one who slowly roasts in the fires of Hell all those who rebel against him- is he not to be called executioner? And those whom the Christians burned at the stake, are they fewer in number than the Christians who were burnt? But, all of this notwithstanding, you see, this is still the God who has been worshipped for centuries as the God of love. Absurd? No, on the contrary. It is the patent, signed in blood of man's indelible good sense. Even then, in his savage, shaggy state, he understood: A true algebraic love of mankind will inevitably be inhuman, and the inevitable sign of the truth is its cruelty."

From Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We"