Life & Wisdom Quote by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Justice, in Yevgeny Yevtushenko's hands, isn't a blind goddess with scales; it's public transit. The metaphor is disarming because it's ordinary, even faintly comic, and that plainness is the point: injustice is not an abstract evil so much as the daily weather of political life, something you learn to dress for. A train that is "nearly always late" still arrives often enough to keep you waiting. That rhythm - delay punctuated by rare, almost miraculous movement - captures how states manage legitimacy: they don't need to deliver justice reliably, only credibly enough to sustain hope.

Yevtushenko wrote as a Soviet-era poet who both benefited from and tested the boundaries of thaw-era openness. His work circulated in a culture where truth was negotiated, not declared; where official justice was frequently performance, and real accountability tended to come by accident, factional struggle, or belated rehabilitation. In that context, lateness isn't just inconvenience. It's strategy. The system can point to the timetable - courts, commissions, slogans - while time itself does the dirty work: witnesses disappear, memories soften, outrage cools, victims age.

The bite of the line is its double-edged pessimism. It concedes the possibility of justice without granting it dignity. You can almost hear the platform announcements: delayed due to unforeseen circumstances. The subtext is a warning about what waiting does to citizens: it trains them in patience, resignation, and the quiet recalibration of what they will accept. The image leaves you with a bleak question: if justice arrives late often enough, is it still justice, or just closure with paperwork?