02/01/2024

…people being divided generally, according to the law of nature, into two categories: a lower one, ordinary people, who are, so to speak, material serving solely for the reproduction of their own kind; and people proper—that is, those who have the gift or talent of speaking a new word in their environment. The subdivisions here are naturally endless, but the distinctive features of both categories are quite marked: people of the first, or material, category are by nature conservative, staid, live in obedience, and like being obedient. In my opinion they even must be obedient, because that is their purpose, and for them there is decidedly nothing humiliating in it. Those of the second category all transgress the law, are destroyers or inclined to destroy, depending on their abilities. The crimes of these people, naturally, are relative and variegated; for the most part they call, in quite diverse declarations, for the destruction of the present in the name of the better.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment