Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

The aphorism contrasts moral condemnation with moral comprehension. It suggests that public judgment—labeling someone an “evildoer”—requires little effort, while the harder task is to grasp the human motives, wounds, social pressures, and spiritual conflicts that lead to wrongdoing. In Dostoyevsky’s fictional world, crime is rarely a simple matter of vice; it is entangled with pride, despair, ideology, poverty, and the longing for redemption. The line therefore implies an ethic of humility: understanding does not excuse harm, but it resists self-righteousness and opens the possibility of mercy, reform, and a more truthful account of human nature.