Notes from the underground quotes

I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man.

Hell is others.

Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

What is to be done with the millions of facts we have gleaned – the millions of facts discovered by man? One has only to look at the notes that have multiplied in our own lifetimes and are still multiplying in a terrifying progression, essentially useless, for they are not unified in any way, and it is still impossible to make anything of them; each separate note retains its significance; each dissolves into a meaningless state of confusion; one could put the notes together into entire volumes, pages of words, but no concept would result from them; pages of words remain pages of words. And so we have tens of thousands of steps here—steps that go nowhere.

It is all the same to me; whether I grow up or shrink again into the earth, whether I emerge from under the bloody, chaotic growth or from the miserable, fetid dump; or from immortality wrapped in a shroud. The worst thing is that I would have a purpose, and that would be a kind of life.

I close my eyes and ponder: if you take two normal men, the one a learned doctor, the other an idiot, and give counsel to both, ‘You must believe, you must learn to believe,’ then the doctor would spend his entire life successfully trying to do so, whereas the idiot would simply not succeed. This is sheer mockery.

This circumstance, however, barely troubles me. I have a passport, and as for food – I have a purse. I will roam the streets aimlessly.

Reason is nothing more than wounded pride; it doesn’t exist, for Nature has taken care to obscure the idea.

Water closes above the head, while below the step is irrevocable.

I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.

I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness.

What do I care that nothing has worked out for me, that I’ve been unsuccessful — and what am I sacrificing? Surely not my free will; it’s simply insult added to injury.

When reason fails, the devil helps.

Mirrors and reflections simply aren’t good for underground minds; yet they are an inexhaustible source of thoughts for those who know how to use them.

If they’d provided a reasonable explanation, that’s one thing; but they simply reasoned that I wouldn’t understand!

For every individual who misbehaves or breaks the law, there are always a hundred individuals ready to cry, ‘Crucify him!’

Hell is impossible for a human imagination to comprehend.

What is in the darkness of the hidden recesses of the soul? Do I possess monstrous qualities?

All these fantasies only serve to prove that man is still by nature a wild beast.

However stupid the man may be, when he speaks, he speaks foolishly.

You may laugh at me now, and call me names, but I will not give in to you!

Sometimes, indeed, we may ask what the value is of all this activity which, to our purposes, is of no apparent use.

There are times when insanity becomes sense and sense insanity.

I am a realist. All I want is to speak the truth.

Before reason, gentlemen, before reason there is faith! Faith is higher than reason!

I fancied that I was not serious either. That, all my life, I had taken a special pleasure in being nothing more than a studied man.

Maybe man will rise to heights yet? It was the phrase, ‘Rise to heights yet’, that scratched at my mind.

What, let’s say, has mankind accomplished in all material respects during thousands of years?

Oh, if only they’d strangled me at birth or cracked my skull open with a brick when I was still unborn!

I love science, solely and exclusively science. What does it matter if I am a madman or genius? It doesn’t even matter if I am pure spirit; all that’s vital is that science is my only passion.

What do I care for all that? The underground wishes to save itself to save itself for its own good — not yours.

Yes, the underground is plutocratic, all right, but only aesthetically, while you are so in disgusting reality: that’s the only difference.

To be unable to take a step except in the right direction.

Men will live for a long time yet in obedience, but that’s precisely what they’ve lost.

I despise what is merely necessary; I want the unnecessary.

What if it isn’t earnestness but something else that excites repugnation? Maybe wit! Maybe they don’t like my wit? But I know that wit is only a decoration and leads directly to vulgarity.

What, for instance, can an intelligent man say to himself in contrast to nature, when he realizes that for him there isn’t yet a fact, not to mention a settled fact?

Yes, let them teach you now, with their inventions and their conspiracies, that you are artificially pulled out of the parental womb and shoved under a chemical wash! They’re telling me a majority of living individuals have never been baptized! But you be baptized, and that’s enough for you!

What’s necessary is to shove something under the human nose, smell and see how badly it stinks.

No, surely even Saint Petersburg doesn’t lack real criminals? But, if there are, they must be secretly grieving! The underground elevates the spirit; there I showed it you.

I could not admit that around me, under me, above me, on all sides of me in fact, there was nothing but ugliness and corruption, and my being fascinated by this, I wanted still more to look into it.

Ah, how accurately this man observes me in every last detail.

But independence, initiative and creativity are less than nothing compared to reflexes of apathy.

Intelligence! Fascination with intelligence! The underground man would have none of it.

I have a gift, a talent that is shared by no other! It is calling me to recklessness and abandon!

All the lofty acts for which men are honored and praised are nothing but ordinary, daily actions; and anyone cultivating a spiritualized body with as much fervor as gentlemen of our time—who doesn’t stop to think—cultivate a physical body, will cultivate purity, and precisely as it is practiced now.

You scandalize and disconcerting devil, with reason’s the devangelist? Yet with reason you know who put thought within my breast! Reason triumphs, straight to the fragmentation of vanity! Reason is the first step, shame the second!

Prostitution is a free profession; such women should be permitted – I insist on this point! And should beg on their knees to all great men—especially our own great men!

The underground makes no sense, and the underground has no aim—yet the evil has purpose and aims higher than the underground!

And if, incidentally, they cut off your head in reality—then you won’t expect Me, as Katarina Ivanova did!