“Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, as they say everywhere.”Feodor Dostoievski · Însemnări din subterană · 1864 · Partea II, capitolul 1
We can get used to anything, and that is exactly what keeps us captive in what we accepted.
The sentence mixes admiration with horror: the flexibility that let us survive also lets us accept degradation. The mechanism is habituation — repeated suffering becomes background noise, not a signal. A political prisoner learns to sleep in his cell, and after release struggles to sleep in silence; the cell has become his normal. Adaptation is thus both a gift and a trap.
Why it matters Useful when you wonder why you have tolerated a bad situation for years: perhaps you are not enduring it, merely accustomed to it.