Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground

I recently managed to understand what Orhan Pamuk was implying when he said,

It was as if Dostoevsky was whispering into my ear, teaching me secret language of the soul, pulling me into a society of radicals who, though inflamed by dreams of changing the world, were also locked into secret organizations and taken with the pleasures of deceiving others in the name of revolution, damning and degrading those who did not speak their language or share their version.

Above is quoted from Pamuk's views on Notes from Underground in Other Colours and how deeply he was impacted by it and how it was also one of the key readings early in his life to shape and shook his thinking. Pamuk's Other Colours remains one of the most important book that I have read to say, if, I have to be economical with words. Returning to Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, sample these.

Man has such predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

And what is it that civilization softens in us? The only gain of civilization for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations- and absolutely nothing more. Have you noticed that it is the most civilized gentlemen who have been the subtlest slaughterers?

Our choice is usually mistaken from a false view of our advantage.

For if a desire should come into conflict with reason we shall then reason and not desire, because it will be impossible retaining our reason to be senseless in our desires, and in that way knowingly act against reason and desire to injure ourselves.

And finally the notes that struck me the deeply,

You know the direct, legitimate fruit of consciousness is inertia.

All "direct" persons and men of actions are active just because they are stupid and limited. How explain that? I will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they take immediate and secondary causes for primary ones, and in that way persuade themselves more quickly and easily than other people do that they have found an infallible foundation for their activity, and their minds are at ease and that is the chief thing.