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Who really said it

Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most

Written by Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821–1881 · Russian novelist, essayist & journalist
Verified Free to reuse

This one is real. It is Raskolnikov thinking to himself in the opening chapter of Crime and Punishment, serialized in 1866 — and it survives in Constance Garnett’s 1914 English translation, which reads “what they fear most.” The popular wording swaps that “they” for “people” — a one-word variant of the same sentence. Dostoevsky’s Russian says “they” there too; it is the sentence immediately before that asks what people are most afraid of, which Garnett rendered as “men,” and the variant appears to have carried that noun forward.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most” Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866), Part 1, Chapter 1, translated by Constance Garnett (1914): "It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most." The widely shared "what people fear most" is a variant wording of the same sentence. Via Quotle.info

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Provenance

The source

Work
Crime and Punishment
First published
Serialized in The Russian Messenger, January–December 1866; single volume 1867
Location
Part I, Chapter I — Raskolnikov’s interior monologue
Translation
Constance Garnett, 1914

“I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by these trifles,” he thought, with an odd smile. “Hm... yes, all is in a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.... But I am talking too much. It’s because I chatter that I do nothing.” Part I, Chapter I

Garnett’s 1914 translation reads “what they fear most” — and so does the Russian sentence behind it, «они всего больше боятся». The form that circulates online swaps in “people,” a word that belongs to the sentence just before — «чего люди больше боятся», which Garnett turned into “men.”

Scanned print edition
See the passage in a printed Garnett edition
Crime and Punishment, trans. Constance Garnett, on Project Gutenberg

How we checked it

  • Searched the primary text first. Project Gutenberg’s Crime and Punishment, translated by Constance Garnett ↗, carries the sentence in Part I, Chapter I: “It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.”
  • Confirmed it in print, not just in a digital transcription. A scanned Collier printing of the Garnett translation ↗ shows the same passage in the opening pages of Part I, Chapter I.
  • Checked the Russian. Dostoevsky’s original on Russian Wikisource ↗ reads «Любопытно, чего люди больше боятся? Нового шага, нового собственного слова они всего больше боятся» — «люди» (“people”) in the question, but «они» (“they”) in the sentence the popular wording actually quotes, which is what Garnett wrote.
  • Cross-checked the attribution. Wikiquote ↗ lists the line in its sourced Crime and Punishment section, not under Misattributed or Disputed, and marks “what people fear most” as a variant translation. Quote Investigator has no article on it.
Public domain

The novel was serialized in 1866 ↗ and Constance Garnett’s English translation — the one that carries this sentence — was published in 1914, so both the Russian original and this English wording are public domain in the United States. The single-word “people” variant is not traced to any named modern translator; if it were drawn from a specific later translation, that translation would carry its own copyright.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What drifted

The attribution here is sound — this is one of the rare viral Dostoevsky lines that really is Dostoevsky. What has drifted is the wording, and the fact that a character is saying it.

“people” where the standard translation says “they” variant

Constance Garnett’s 1914 translation, the one carried by Project Gutenberg ↗, reads “Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.” Wikiquote ↗ records the “people” form as a variant translation and does not name a translator for it.

«собственного» — “of their own” abridged

The Russian original ↗ reads «нового собственного слова» — a new word of one’s own. Garnett drops it, and the wording that circulates online follows her — though later renderings restore it: an essay for the North American Dostoevsky Society gives the line as “a new step, a new word of their own” ↗.

Raskolnikov, not Dostoevsky in his own voice context

The sentence is a murderer’s self-justifying interior monologue in Part I, Chapter I, and he dismisses it himself two lines later: “But I am talking too much.” It circulates as motivational advice from the author, which inverts its meaning in the novel ↗.

Dostoevsky wrote it, in Crime and Punishment, Part 1, Chapter 1 — but he gave it to Raskolnikov, and the canonical English wording is “what they fear most.” Read the passage ↗.

Context

Why the line lands

The sentence is not Dostoevsky philosophizing in his own voice. It is Raskolnikov — broke, feverish, weeks into doing nothing but lying in his room and talking himself in circles — walking out into a hot July street in Petersburg and catching himself being frightened of his landlady while planning a murder. The thought about a new step and a new word is his excuse, dressed as an insight.

That framing is the whole point of the chapter. Raskolnikov immediately undercuts himself: “But I am talking too much. It’s because I chatter that I do nothing.” The novel spends six parts demonstrating what happens when a man decides his private theory entitles him to take that new step.

Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.

The word Garnett left out

Dostoevsky’s Russian reads «Нового шага, нового собственного слова они всего больше боятся» — literally a new step, a new word of one’s own. Garnett renders it simply as “uttering a new word,” dropping «собственного».

The omission matters for the novel, because Raskolnikov later builds an entire theory on exactly that phrase — dividing humanity into the ordinary and the men who have, as Garnett puts it, “the gift or the talent to utter a new word.” The opening-chapter thought is the seed of the argument he uses to justify the killing.

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Crime and Punishment, trans. Constance Garnettgutenberg.org

The full Garnett translation. The sentence appears in Part I, Chapter I, in Raskolnikov’s interior monologue.
Scanned Garnett edition (Collier)archive.org

A scanned print copy of the Garnett translation, showing the passage in the opening pages of Part I, Chapter I.
«Преступление и наказание», Часть I, Глава Iru.wikisource.org

Dostoevsky’s Russian original, where the line reads «чего люди больше боятся? Нового шага, нового собственного слова».
Wikiquote: Fyodor Dostoyevskyen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line in its sourced Crime and Punishment section and flags “what people fear most” as a variant translation.
Crime and Punishment: publication historyen.wikipedia.org

Confirms serialization in The Russian Messenger across 1866, the 1867 single volume, and Garnett’s 1914 translation.
Fyodor Dostoevskyen.wikipedia.org

Biography, dates, the Petrashevsky Circle arrest and the Siberian katorga sentence.

The true author

Who wrote it

Fyodor Dostoevsky

1821–1881 · Russian novelist, essayist & journalist

Dostoevsky was arrested in 1849 for belonging to the Petrashevsky Circle, marched out to be shot, reprieved at the last moment by a letter from the tsar, and sent to a Siberian prison camp for four years of hard labour. He came back with the preoccupations that made him — guilt, freedom, the terrible cost of an idea taken seriously — and poured them into Crime and Punishment, which ran in twelve monthly installments through 1866. He is a writer people quote constantly and read carefully rather less often, which is exactly why lines like this one drift.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. Translated by Constance Garnett. 1914. Part 1, chapter 1. Originally serialized in The Russian Messenger, January–December 1866.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/taking-a-new-step-uttering-a-new-word-is-what-people-fear/

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