Fyodor Dostoevsky
Sentenced to death, reprieved on the scaffold
Philosophy
Dostoevsky stood before a firing squad at twenty-eight and was told at the last moment that the Tsar had commuted his sentence to four years in Siberia. Everything he wrote afterwards circles freedom, guilt and the human talent for choosing our own ruin. He is a novelist rather than a philosopher, and his sharpest lines are usually spoken by people who are wrong.
Unhappiness is just as necessary to man as happiness.
Demons (The Possessed), Part II, Chapter I · 1872
Which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings?
Notes from the Underground, Part II, Chapter X · 1864
Strive to love your neighbor actively and indefatigably.
The Brothers Karamazov, Book II, Chapter IV · 1880
One death, and a hundred lives in exchange—it's simple arithmetic!
Crime and Punishment, Part I, Chapter VI · 1866
A man of character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited creature.
Notes from the Underground, Part I, Chapter I · 1864
Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up.
Crime and Punishment, Part V, Chapter IV · 1866
To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.
Crime and Punishment, Part III, Chapter I · 1866
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.
The Brothers Karamazov, Book II, Chapter IV · 1880
God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
The Brothers Karamazov, Book III, Chapter III · 1880
Every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men and everything on earth.
The Brothers Karamazov, Book IV, Chapter I · 1880
The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.
The Brothers Karamazov, Book V, Chapter V · 1880
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.
Crime and Punishment, Part III, Chapter V · 1866
Man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil?
The Brothers Karamazov, Book V, Chapter V · 1880
Too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it.
The Brothers Karamazov, Book V, Chapter IV · 1880
Man has done nothing but invent God so as to go on living, and not kill himself; that's the whole of universal history up till now.
Demons (The Possessed), Part III, Chapter VI · 1872
Read when you want to understand why people act against their own interests
