Quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize the truth, either in himself or anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and others. When he had no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying - to others and to yourself.

By interpreting freedom as the propagation and immediate gratification of needs, people distort their own nature, for they engender in themselves a multitude of pointless and foolish desires, habits, and incongruous stratagems. Their lives are motivated only by mutual envy, sensuality, and ostentation.

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas.

Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

The man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence

The more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.

I've long stopped worrying about who invented whom - God man or man God.