G’s Reviews > Demons > Status Update

God is necessary and therefore must exist.

But I know that he does not and cannot exist.

Don’t you understand that a man with these thoughts cannot go on living ?

And is it possible to believe in a demon, without believing at all in a God ? Stavrogin laughed

Oh quite possible, it happens all the time

We’ll instiguish desire, we’ll get drinking, gossip, denunciation going : we’ll get get unheard of depravity going ; we’ll stifle every genius in infancy. This will be taken care of us by us, the rulers. Slaves must have rulers. Complete obedience, complete impersonality

It is a sign of nation extinction when there begins to be Gods in common. When many nations start having common ideas of evil and good, then the nations die out and the very distinction between evil and good begins to fade and disappear. Reason has never been able to define evil and good, or even to separate evil from good, if only approximately on the contrary, it has always confused them, shamefully and pitifully

These men of yours never loved the people, never suffered for them or sacrificed anything for them, no matter what they themselves imagined for their own good pleasure

I succumbed to the temptation.

I skipped the other books recommended before as this seems to be Fyodor’s darkest, most political and underrated masterpiece.

Nikolai is too much of an intriguing and terrifying character.

Here I embark on a long journey.