Quotations from the introduction to the second edition of *Under Western Eyes*
Joseph Conrad
1857-1924 Polish/British

Truth alone is the justification of any fiction which can make the least claim to the quality of art or may hope to take its place in the culture of men and women of its time.
—Joseph Conrad, the introduction to the second edition of Under Western Eyes

The most terrifying reflection (I am speaking now for myself) is that all these people are not the product of the exceptional but of the general—of the normality of their place, and time, and race. The ferocity and imbecility of an autocratic rule rejecting all legality and in fact basing itself upon complete moral anarchism provokes the no less imbecile and atrocious answer of a purely Utopian revolutionism encompassing destruction by the first means to hand, in the strange conviction that a fundamental change of hearts must follow the downfall of any given human institutions. These people are unable to see that all they can effect is merely a change of names.
—Joseph Conrad, the introduction to the second edition of Under Western Eyes