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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

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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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Creativity is the mystery of freedom.
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The physical union of the sexes ... only intensifies man's sense of solitude.
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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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Victory over fear is the first spiritual duty of man.
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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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We are standing on the threshold of a world-epoch of religious creativeness, on a cosmic divide.
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Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.
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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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In every artistic activity a new world is created, the cosmos, a world enlightened and free.
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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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Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself.
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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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Every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history.
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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 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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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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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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