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The Russian yearning for the meaning of life is the major theme of our literature, and this is the real point of our intelligentsia's existence.

Nikolai Berdyaev

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Nikolai Berdyaev
Age: 73 †
Born: 1874
Born: January 1
Died: 1948
Died: January 1
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
University Teacher
Kiev
Nikolay Aleksandrovich Berdyayev
Nikolaj Berdyayev
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
Life
Theme
Majors
Major
Meaning
Existence
Literature
Intelligentsia
Point
Yearning
Real
Russian

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The meaning of conservatism is not that it impedes movement forward and upward, but that it impedes movement backwards and downwards—to chaotic darkness and the return to a primitive state.
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We find the most terrible form of atheism, not in the militant and passionate struggle against the idea of God himself, but in the practical atheism of everyday living, in indifference and torpor. We often encounter these forms of atheism among those who are formally Christians.
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I never remain passive in the process of reading: while I read I am engaged in a constant creative activity, which leads me to remember not so much the actual matter of the book as the thoughts evoked in my mind by it, directly or indirectly.
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Creativity is the supreme mystery of life, the mystery of the appearance of something new, hitherto unknown, derived from nothing, proceeding from nothing, born of nothing other.
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I do not think discursively. It is not so much that I arrive at truth as that I take my start from it.
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But man as a person, the same man, gains mastery over egocentric self-confinement by disclosing a universe in himself...Personality is a universe, it is filled with universal content.
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Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself.
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Creativity is the mystery of freedom.
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Perhaps the saddest thing to admit is that those who rejected the Cross have to carry it, while those who welcomed it are so often engaged in crucifying others.
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The will to originality is not the will to be peculiar and unlike anybody else it means the desire to derive one's consciousness from its primary source.
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It is beyond dispute that the state exercises very great power over human life and it always shows a tendency to go beyond the limits laid down for it.
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The question of bread for myself is a material question but the question of bread for my neighbour, for everybody, is a spiritual and a religious question.
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We are standing on the threshold of a world-epoch of religious creativeness, on a cosmic divide.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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Death, that final evil, is one of the paths to eternity. Endless life in the conditions of our existence would be a nightmare.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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Freedom is the power to create out of nothing, the power of the spirit to create out of itself.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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...in the third epoch the divinity of man's creative nature is finally revealed and divine power becomes human power.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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In every artistic activity a new world is created, the cosmos, a world enlightened and free.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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The overwhelming majority of people, including Christians, are materialists. They do not believe in the power of spirit. They believe only in material power.
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Every moral act of love, of mercy, and of sacrifice brings to pass the end of the world where hatred, cruelty, and selfishness reign supreme.
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Every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history.
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