Lying to Oneself Means Losing Self-Respect | Esmaeil Baqaei

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei cited a passage from Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" on X, saying it aptly describes how America’s extreme reliance on lies has corrupted its foreign policy toward Iran and the region to the point where it can no longer distinguish truth from falsehood.

This passage from Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" aptly describes the situation in which the US system of governance and foreign policy regarding Iran and the region finds itself due to its extreme reliance on 'lies': 

» The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. «

The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky

In Russia | Vincent Urban

The Russians. The crisscross design of humanity that had so fascinated Dostoevsky, inspiring him to write in his notebook: I like, when roaming the streets, to look attentively at certain wholly strange passersby. 

 

 

I study their faces and speculate. 

 

 

Who are they? 

 

 

How do they live? 

 

 

What is their occupation? 

 

What are they thinking?

 

 

What are they saying? 

 

 

Whatever a man wishes to see in our Mother Russia is there to find. 

 

 

It just depends on how you look at it. 

 

 

The world's most spectacular armies. 

 

The Hermitage. 

 

 

The home of so many astonishing rulers—warriors and fools, geniuses and madmen.

 

It's the mud on our shoes, it's the rubble. It's the mud in our teeth, it is slush. 
It's the pure, taintless dust that we crumble, that we pound, that we mix, that we crush. 
But we call it our own for it will open one day. To receive and embrace us and turns us to clay.

 

In all the world no people are so tearless.

So proud, so simple as are we. 

In Russia. | Vincent Urban, 2026.