‘I will tell you a fact, gentlemen,’ he went on in the same tone as before, that is, with extraordinary warmth, but at the same time he was virtually laughing, possibly even at his very words – ‘a fact the observation and discovery of which I have the honor of ascribing to myself alone; at least, nothing has been said or written about it. The fact expresses the whole essence of Russian liberalism of the sort of which I am speaking. In the first place, what is liberalism, speaking generally, but an attack (whether justified or mistaken is another question) on the established order of things? That’s so, isn’t it? Well, my fact consists in this – that Russian liberalism is not an attack on the existing order of things, but is an attack on the very essence of our things, on the things themselves, not merely on the order; not on the Russian way, but on Russia itself… But at the same time, this is such a fact as has not existed or occurred anywhere at any time since the world began, not among any single people, and therefore this fact is incidental and may pass, I admit. There cannot be such a liberal anywhere else who would hate his very fatherland. How can we explain it among us? Why, by the same thing as before – that the Russian liberal is, as yet, not a Russian liberal; by nothing else, to my mind.’
The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky