Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was a Russian novelist and essayist whose late masterpieces, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov, place him among the greatest novelists in any language. After youthful involvement in a circle of utopian socialists, he was sentenced to death and reprieved at the last moment, then sent to four years of penal labor in Siberia, an experience that shaped the rest of his writing. The quotes below are attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky, organized by topic.
Browse Fyodor Dostoevsky by topic
Fyodor Dostoevsky on Freedom
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“Money is coined liberty , and so it is ten times dearer to the man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it. But money can always and everywhere be spent, and, moreover, forbidden fruit is sweetest of all.”
The House of the Dead (1862) ch. 1; as translated by Constance Garnett (1915), p. 16
Fyodor Dostoevsky on God
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Attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky:
“If God does not exist, everything is permitted.”
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“To study the meaning of man and of life — 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.”
Personal correspondence (1839), as quoted in Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971) by Konstantin Mochulski, as translated by Michael A. Minihan, p. 17
Fyodor Dostoevsky on Knowledge
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“I want to say to you, about myself, that I am a child of this age, a child of unfaith and scepticism , and probably (indeed I know it) shall remain so to the end of my life. How dreadfully has it tormented me (and torments me even now) this longing for faith , which is all the stronger for the proofs I have against it. And yet God gives me sometimes moments of perfect peace ; in such moments I lov”
Letter to Mme. N. D. Fonvisin (1854), as published in Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends (1914), translated by Ethel Golburn Mayne, Letter XXI, p. 71 -
“I think that the principal and most basic spiritual need of the Russian People is the need for suffering, incessant and unslakeable suffering, everywhere and in everything. I think the Russian People have been infused with this need to suffer from time immemorial. A current of martyrdom runs through their entire history, and it flows not only from external misfortunes and disasters but springs fro”
A Writer's Diary , Vol. 1: 1873-1876 (1994), pp. 161-162 -
“It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ . My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.”
As quoted in Kierkegaard, the Melancholy Dane (1950) by Harold Victor Martin. | Variant translation. Last Notebook (1880–1881), Literaturnoe nasledstvo , 83: 696; as quoted in Kenneth Lantz, The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia (2004), p. 21: "I believe in Christ and confess him not like some child; my hosanna has passed through an enormous furnace of doubt.
Fyodor Dostoevsky on Life
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Attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky:
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
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Attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky:
“To live without hope is to cease to live.”
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“Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea . And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul , for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone .”
A Writer's Diary , Vol. 1: 1873-1876 , ed. Kenneth Lantz (1994), p. 734
Fyodor Dostoevsky on Mind
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Attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky:
“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky on Time
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“I think that the principal and most basic spiritual need of the Russian People is the need for suffering, incessant and unslakeable suffering, everywhere and in everything. I think the Russian People have been infused with this need to suffer from time immemorial. A current of martyrdom runs through their entire history, and it flows not only from external misfortunes and disasters but springs from the very heart of the People themselves. There is always an element of suffering even in the happiness of the Russian People, and without it their happiness is incomplete.”
A Writer's Diary , Vol. 1: 1873-1876 (1994), pp. 161-162
Fyodor Dostoevsky on Truth
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Attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky:
“Beauty will save the world.”
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Attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky:
“Above all, do not lie to yourself.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky on Virtue
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Attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky:
“We are all responsible to all for all.”
Things actually not said by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Fyodor Dostoevsky but are in fact from someone else. Did Fyodor Dostoevsky say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did Fyodor Dostoevsky say this? No.
“The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief, the closer is God!”
Attributed to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment in self-help books and on social media. The words are from an untitled poem (dated 1878) by the 19th century Russian poet Apollon Maykov . The full quatrain goes: "Не говори, что нет спасенья, / Что ты в печалях изнемог: / Чем ночь темней, тем ярче звезды, / Чем глубже скорбь, тем ближе Бог."
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Did Fyodor Dostoevsky say this? No.
“Trust no one in whom the desire to punish is strong”
Variants of such a statement have also been attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Nietzsche , but the only definite source found for any is in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra : " Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! "
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Did Fyodor Dostoevsky say this? No.
“Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.”
Though attributed to Dostoevsky on social media, there is no record of him making such a statement.
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Did Fyodor Dostoevsky say this? No.
“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
Alleged to be from House of the Dead , but no such quotation is present.