Sunday, March 7, 2010

Veritas

"To this I must add that he was already to some extent a youth of our times - in other words, naturally honest, insisting on truth, seeking it and believing in it, and, once believing, demanding instant commitment to it with all the strength of his soul and wanting to rush off and perform great deeds, sacrificing all, if necessary life itself. Although unfortunately these youths do not understand that the sacrifice of life is in most cases perhaps the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to dedicate, for example, five or six years of their exuberant youth to hard, painstaking study and the acquisition of knowledge for the sole purpose of enhancing tenfold their inherent capacity to serve just that cherished truth, that great work which they are committed to accomplish - such a sacrifice as this remains almost completely beyond the capabilities of many of them."
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, "The Brothers Karamazov"

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