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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
Meaning
Existence
Literature
Intelligentsia
Point
Yearning
Real
Russian
Life
Theme
Majors
Major

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We are standing on the threshold of a world-epoch of religious creativeness, on a cosmic divide.
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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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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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Conscience is the spiritual, supernatural principle in man, and it is not of social origin at all. It is rather the perversion and confusion of conscience that is of social origin.
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Every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history.
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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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In every artistic activity a new world is created, the cosmos, a world enlightened and free.
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There is a tragic clash between Truth and the world. Pure undistorted truth burns up the world.
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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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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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Creativity is the mystery of freedom.
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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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Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.
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Freedom is the power to create out of nothing, the power of the spirit to create out of itself.
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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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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.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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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.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself.
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The physical union of the sexes ... only intensifies man's sense of solitude.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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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.
Nikolai Berdyaev