Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Means
Unlike
Else
Primaries
Mean
Primary
Writing
Peculiar
Anybody
Source
Consciousness
Derive
Desire
Originality

More quotes by Nikolai Berdyaev

Image
In creativity the way will be found for subject to pass into object, the identity of subject with object will be restored. All the great creators have foreseen this turning-point. Today, in the depths of culture itself and in all its separate spheres, this crisis of creativity is ripening.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
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.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
Freedom is the power to create out of nothing, the power of the spirit to create out of itself.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
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
Image
We are standing on the threshold of a world-epoch of religious creativeness, on a cosmic divide.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
The physical union of the sexes ... only intensifies man's sense of solitude.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
There is a tragic clash between Truth and the world. Pure undistorted truth burns up the world.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
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.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
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.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
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
Image
The overwhelming majority of people, including Christians, are materialists. They do not believe in the power of spirit. They believe only in material power.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
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
Image
In every artistic activity a new world is created, the cosmos, a world enlightened and free.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
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.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
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.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
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
Image
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.
Nikolai Berdyaev
Image
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.
Nikolai Berdyaev