A review by pcdbigfoot
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

3.75

"He (humankind) ... would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary--that men still are men and not the keys of a piano ... even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point.”

Our desire for free will (ego) obscures our logic.  The author's quote is a better summary than I could write.  This one's pretty short - a timely read for me.