Notes from the Underground

"...a man, whoever he is, always and everywhere likes to act as he chooses, and not all according to the dictates of reason and self interest; it is indeed possible, and sometimes positively imperative (in my view), to act directly contrary to one's own best interests. One's own free and unfettered volition, one's own caprice, however wild, one's own fancy, inflamed sometimes to the point of madness -- that is the one best and greatest good, which is never taken into consideration because it will not fit into any classification, and the omissions of which always sends all systems and theories to the devil. Where did all the sages get the idea that a man's desires must be normal and virtuous? Why did they imagine that he must inevitably will what is reasonable and profitable? What a man needs is simply and solely independent volition, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead."