Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Truth Quotes

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I go to spread the tidings, I want to spread the tidings — of what? Of the truth, for I have seen it, have seen it with my own eyes, have seen it in all its glory.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.
And it was after that that I found out the truth. I learnt the truth last November — on the third of November, to be precise — and I remember every instant since.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
People really do like seeing their best friends humiliated; a large part of the friendship is based on humiliation; and that is an old truth, well known to all intelligent people.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me — and, indeed, it is just then that they are particularly dear to me. I could join in their laughter — not exactly at myself, but through affection for them, if I did not feel so sad as I look at them. Sad because they do not know the truth and I do know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth! But they won't understand that. No, they won't understand it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen the truth — it is not as though I had invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection that I cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature... and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The most offensive is not their lying—one can always forgive lying—lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth—what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying…

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? If once one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be, whether you are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream, so be it, but that real life of which you make so much I had meant to extinguish by suicide, and my dream, my dream — oh, it revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full of power!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
They may all be drunk at my place, but they're all honest, and though we do lie-because I lie, too-in the end we'll lie our way to the truth

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky