Who says this
Every idea belongs to someone
The narrator argues nothing. Every idea in this book is spoken by a person who has something riding on it — and then the book tests it, often on the person who said it. Follow three of them here, voice by voice, in the order the novel gives them.
An idea, and its voices
“Everything is lawful”
If there is no immortality, there is no virtue — and then who is to blame for a murder?
nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism
Miüsov reports it at the monastery as Ivan’s argument, a clever man’s paradox.
if there’s no immortality of the soul, then there’s no virtue, and everything is lawful
Rakitin passes it on to Alyosha the same afternoon, as gossip about Ivan.
‘everything is lawful’ since the word has been said. I won’t deny it.
Ivan claims it himself, to Alyosha, at the end of the Grand Inquisitor.
Alyosha got up, went to him and softly kissed him on the lips.
Alyosha does not argue. He answers with the gesture Christ gives the Inquisitor.
That was quite right what you taught me
Smerdyakov says he killed on the strength of it, and hands the idea back to its author.
‘all things are lawful’ and that’s the end of it! That’s all very charming
The devil quotes Ivan’s own words back to him, as a joke at his expense.
An idea, and its voices
“Each of us is responsible to all for all”
The novel’s answer to the second question: not one man, but everyone.
every one is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything
Said first by the elder’s brother, dying at seventeen, to their mother — as the elder remembers it.
we are each responsible to all for all
The elder carries his brother’s words through his own life, and tells them to Alyosha.
Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it.
His teaching turns the idea into practice, set against the Inquisitor’s bread and authority.
not because I killed him, but because I meant to kill him
Arrested, Dmitri accepts punishment for a wish, not a deed.
Because we are all responsible for all.
In prison, he reaches the elder’s words by his own road, from his dream of the babe.
An idea, and its voices
“I return the ticket”
Ivan’s case against the world God made: no harmony is worth a child’s suffering.
It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.
After the stories of tortured children, Ivan declines the terms rather than the Creator.
“That’s rebellion,” murmured Alyosha, looking down.
Alyosha names it, and cannot yet answer it.
Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it.
Book VI was written as the reply: not a proof, but a way of living in the same world.