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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.

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
Conscience
Principles
Rather
Spiritual
Perversion
Social
Supernatural
Men
Origin
Confusion
Principle

More quotes by Nikolai Berdyaev

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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 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.
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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.
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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The physical union of the sexes ... only intensifies man's sense of solitude.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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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.
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.
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.
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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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Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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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.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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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
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Creativity is the mystery of freedom.
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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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.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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There is a tragic clash between Truth and the world. Pure undistorted truth burns up the world.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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Every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history.
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.
Nikolai Berdyaev
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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.
Nikolai Berdyaev