To study the meaning of man and of life โ I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
Fyodor DostoevskyHow many ideas have there been in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared?
Fyodor DostoevskyAnd what's strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as man.
Fyodor DostoevskyI don't need money, or, better, it's not money that I need; it's not even power; I need only what is obtained by power and simply cannot be obtained without power: the solitary and calm awareness of strength! That is the fullest definition of freedom, which the world so struggles over!
Fyodor Dostoevskyyou don't need free will to determine that twice two is four. that's not what i call free will
Fyodor DostoevskyOne's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice-however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy-is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms... [an]will attain his object-that is, convince himself he is a man and not a piano-key!
Fyodor Dostoevsky