Yevgeny Zamyatin — We [58]

After all, no matter how limited their intelligence, they should have understood that such a way of life was truly mass murder—even if slow murder. The state (humaneness) forbade the killing of a single individual, but not the partial killing of millions day by day. To kill one individual, that is, to diminish the total sum of human lives by fifty years, was criminal. But to diminish the sum of human lives by fifty million years was not considered criminal. — Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, 58

Note

Redefining murder through mathematical aggregation transforms state control into arithmetic humanitarianism.