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If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism.

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov (1879)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Pyotr Miusov, summarizing an argument made by Ivan at a social gathering

More quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole.

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877)

Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.

The Idiot (1868)

Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends.

Notes from Underground (1864)

If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love.

The Brothers Karamazov (1879)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Fyodor Dostoyevsky (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.