Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Human behavior is influenced by a multitude of factors that are often more intricate than the simple explanations we provide afterward.
This quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky highlights the complexity of human motivations and actions. He suggests that while we may attempt to understand or categorize human behavior through simplified narratives or explanations, the reality is that these actions are shaped by a vast array of influences and conditions that cannot be fully captured in hindsight. This serves as a reminder to approach human behavior with humility and openness to its complexity.
Themes
Human BehaviorComplexityActionsMotivationUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about psychology, one could say: 'As Dostoevsky reminds us, the roots of our actions can be deeply complex and shouldn't be oversimplified.'
More from Fyodor Dostoevsky
All quotes →What if, when this fog scatters and flies upward, the whole rotten, slimey city goes with it, rises with the fog and vanishes like smoke.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that if you have the guillotine in the forefront, and with such glee, it's for the sole reason that cutting heads off is the easiest thing, and having an idea is difficult!
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Similar quotes
An act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behaviour may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature.
Emile DurkheimRead
"Civilization" has been thrust upon me since the days of the reservations, and it has not added one whit to my sense of justice, to my reverence for the rights of life, to my love for truth, honesty, and generosity, or to my faith in Wakan Tanka, God of the Lakotas.
Luther Standing BearRead
Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness.
William JamesRead
I am a Muslim, because it's a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time.
Malcolm XRead
Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license," and they will define freedom out of existence.
Voltairine De CleyreRead
Happy is the man who knows or even the man who remembers those silent vigils where silence itself was the sign of the communion of souls!
Gaston BachelardRead