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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.

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
Appearance
Supreme
Mystery
Creativity
Born
Hitherto
Nothing
Proceeding
Something
Derived
Life
Unknown

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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 physical union of the sexes ... only intensifies man's sense of solitude.
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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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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.
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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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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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Victory over fear is the first spiritual duty of man.
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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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Objectification is above all exteriorization, the alienation of spirit from itself.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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Time is the product of changing realities, beings, existences.
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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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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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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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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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...in the third epoch the divinity of man's creative nature is finally revealed and divine power becomes human power.
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