44 Quotes by Nikolai A. Berdyaev

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.

Self-realization is a process of permanent auto-creation, an elaboration of the new man at the expense of the old.

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.

True life is creativity, not development: it is the freedom for creative acts, for creative fire, rather than necessity and the heaviness of congealing self-perfection.

In every artistic activity a new world is created, the cosmos, a world enlightened and free.

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.

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.

God is a reality of spirit He cannot be conceived as an object, not even as the very highest object. God is not to be found in the world of objects.

Creativeness is liberation from slavery. Man is free when he finds himself in a state of creative activity. Creativeness leads to ecstasy of the moment. The products of creativeness are within time, but the creative act itself lies outside time.