The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy. (“Tomorrow”)

If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.

Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.
("Literature, Revolution, and Entropy")

This authority stood steady as the cathedral itself. The building was raised once and for all, and for those who dare doubt it, something else was raised: The witch fires.

With his head thrust forward like a ram, Baryba pushed his way through to the front. For some reason this was necessary, he felt with all his guts that it was necessary. He clenched his iron jaws. Something bestial stirred in him, something he hungered for, some murderous instinct. To be with everybody, to howl like everybody, to hit the one that everybody else was hitting. ("A Provincial Tale")

The same joy is in a stone which, thrown aloft, hesitates a little at the height of its flight and then rushes down to the ground. It is the same with a man when in his final convulsion he takes a last deep breath and dies.