“If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions.”
More from Fyodor Dostoevsky on Philosophy
“I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.”
“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”
“Suffering is part and parcel of extensive intelligence and a feeling heart.”
“Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.”
“Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart. Truly great men I think, must feel great sorrow in this world.”
“Consciousness is man's greatest misfortune, still I know that man loves it and will not exchange it for any satisfactions.”
“And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better - cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?”
“Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water.”
“What a man need is simply and solely independence volition, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.”
“Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.”
Others on Philosophy
Ludwig Wittgenstein
22 quotes“The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.”
Christopher Hitchens
22 quotes“How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of...”
Nietzsche
22 quotes“One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as an equal or a superior.”
Carl Jung
21 quotes“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
Immanuel Kant
20 quotes“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
Heraclitus
19 quotes“All things flow nothing abides.”
H. L. Mencken
17 quotes“We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.”
C.S. Lewis
15 quotes“[Consciousness] is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.”
Samuel Beckett
14 quotes“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.”
Napoleon
14 quotes“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
Buddha
13 quotes“Doubt everything. Find your own light.”
Joseph Conrad
13 quotes“The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future.”