"And I shan't be drunk... And what made me get so drunk? Because they got me into an argument, damn them! I've sworn never to argue! They talk such trash! I almost came to blows! ... Would you believe, they insist on the complete absence of individualism and that's just what they relish! Not to be themselves, to be as unlike themselves as they can. That's what they regard as the highest point of progress. If only their nonsense were their own, but as it is..."


"What do you think?" shouted Razumin, louder than ever, "You think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That's man's privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes, and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing too, in its way; but we can't even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense and I'll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. In the first case you are a man, in the second, no better than a bird. Truth won't escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience, and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people's ideas, it's what we are used to! Am I right, am I right?"


~Dostoevsky, Crime & Punishment, Part III, chapter 1