Марина Белькова > Марина's Quotes

“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“When reason fails, the devil helps!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Today, everything serves war. There is not one discovery which the military does not study with the aim of applying it to warfare, not one invention which they do not attempt to turn to military use. —Nikolai Fyodorov, Philosophy of the Common Cause, 1891”
― Yasha Levine, Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet

“We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“Why, you are so eaten up with pride and vanity that you'll end by eating up one another, that's what I prophecy.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“Nothing helps a man to reform like thinking of the past with regret.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him.”
― Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”
― Victor Frankl, Man's Search For Ultimate Meaning

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how".”
― Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsiblity on the West Coast.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of the their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning