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

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

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Victory over fear is the first spiritual duty of man.
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Creativity is the mystery of freedom.
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Time is the product of changing realities, beings, existences.
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Every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history.
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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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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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Freedom is the power to create out of nothing, the power of the spirit to create out of itself.
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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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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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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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In every artistic activity a new world is created, the cosmos, a world enlightened and free.
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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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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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Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself.
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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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The physical union of the sexes ... only intensifies man's sense of solitude.
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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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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 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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