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Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821–9 February 1881)
Maybe it's a good idea to remember Dostoyevsky today, who died 130 years ago. All the quotes are from The Idiot (1868)
It wasn't the New World that mattered ... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.
Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man...
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.
We are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, ... it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, we can't start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.
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