“For goodness sake,' they'll cry, 'you cannot argue against it--two times two is four! Nature doesn't consult you; it doesn't give a damn for your wishes or whether its laws please or do not please you. You must accept it as it is, and hence accept all consequences. A wall is indeed a wall. ...' And so on and so forth. Good God, what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if, for one reason or another, I don't like these laws, including the 'two times two is four'? Of course, I cannot break through this wall with my head if I don't have the strength to break through it, but neither will I accept it simply because I face a stone wall and am not strong enough.”
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Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, perhaps most recognized today for his novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.
Dostoyevsky's literary output explores human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th-century existentialism, his Notes from Underground (1864), written in the embittered voice of the anonymous "underground man", was called by Walter Kaufmann the "best overture for existentialism ever written."
His tombstone reads "Verily, Verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." from John 12:24, which is also the epigraph of his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov.