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Quotation from Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.”
Notes from Underground, Part I, Chapter IX, trans. Constance Garnett (1918)
Against mathematical certainty as the model of human life, the narrator defends the right to resist even arithmetic.
Citation: "I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too." — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, Part I, Chapter IX, trans. Constance Garnett (1918). (id notes-from-underground-q4)
Portrait: Portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky by Vasily Perov, Vasily Perov, Public domain.
