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

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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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There is a tragic clash between Truth and the world. Pure undistorted truth burns up the world.
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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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Freedom is the power to create out of nothing, the power of the spirit to create out of itself.
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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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In every artistic activity a new world is created, the cosmos, a world enlightened and free.
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The creation of the world is not only a process which moves from God to humanity. God demands newness from humanity God awaits the works of human freedom.
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...in the third epoch the divinity of man's creative nature is finally revealed and divine power becomes human power.
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Victory over fear is the first spiritual duty of man.
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The physical union of the sexes ... only intensifies man's sense of solitude.
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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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Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself.
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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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Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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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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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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I do not think discursively. It is not so much that I arrive at truth as that I take my start from it.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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In sex we have the source of man's true connection with the cosmos and of his servile dependence. The categories of sex, male and female, are cosmic categories, not merely anthropological categories.
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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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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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