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“Every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“The question of bread for myself is a material question, but the question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“There is a tragic clash between Truth and the world. Pure undistorted truth burns up the world.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“Fear is never a good counselor and victory over fear is the first spiritual duty of man.”
― NICOLAS BERDYAEV

“Bread for me is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.”
― Nicholas Berdyaev

“In reality, freedom is aristocratic, not democratic. With sorrow we must recognize the fact that freedom is dear only to those men who think creatively. It is not very necessary to those who do not value thinking. In the so-called democracies, based on the principle of popular sovereignty, a considerable proportion of the people are those who have not yet become conscious of themselves as free beings, bearing within themselves the dignity of freedom. Education to freedom is something still ahead of us, and this will not be achieved in a hurry.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“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.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“The distinction between the things of Caesar and the things of God is constantly being erased in our fallen world, and this always indicates that the Kingdom of Caesar is attempting to swallow up the Kingdom of God.”
― Nikolai A. Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man

“God desires that man should be. God does not wish to be alone. The meaning of existence is the conquest of loneliness, the acquisition of kinship and nearness.”
― Nikolai A. Berdyaev

“History is not an objective empirical datum, it is a myth.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev, The Meaning of History

“The ego has been a fatality both for the human self and for God. 1

[1 - This was once revealed to me in a dream.]”
― Nicolas Berdyaev

“It is noteworthy that at a time when every religious sanction of authority has vanished, we live in a very authoritarian epoch.”
― Nikolai A. Berdyaev

“Spirit, like flame, like freedom, like creativeness, is opposed to any social stagnation or any lifeless tradition. In terms of Kantian philosophy �� terms which I consider erroneous and confusing �� spirit appears as a thing in itself and objectification as a phenomenon. Another and truer definition would be, spirit is freedom and objectification is nature (not in the romantic sense). Objectification has two aspects: on the one hand it denotes the fallen, divided and servile world, in which the existential subjects, the personalities, are materialized. On the other it comprehends the agency of the personal subject, of spirit tending to reinforce ties and communications in this fallen world. Hence objectification is related to the problem of culture, and in this consists the whole complexity of the problem.
In objectification there are no primal realities, but only symbols. The objective spirit is merely a symbolism of spirit. Spirit is realistic while cultural and social life are symbolical. In the object there is never any reality, but only the symbol of reality. The subject alone always has reality. Therefore in objectification and in its product, the objective spirit, there can be no sacred reality, but only its symbolism. In the objective history of the world nothing transpires but a conventional symbolism; the idea of sacredness is peculiar to the existential world, to existential subjects. The real depths of spirit are apprehensible only existentially in the personal experience of destiny, in its suffering, nostalgia, love, creation, freedom and death.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“Modern man, in pursuit of his aim to dominate the world, has become its slave”
― Nikolai Berdyaev, The Meaning of History

“The war educated a generation of believers in force. The demons of hatred and murder then released continue their activity.”
― Nikolai A. Berdyaev

“Control and violence that is best reflected in the state, are evil in themselves. In this knowledge lies the great truth of anarchism.”
― Nikolai A. Berdyaev, Новое религиозное сознание и общественность

“It must be recognized that man in his limited and relative earthly life is capable of bringing about the beautiful and the valuable only when he believes in another life, unlimited, absolute, eternal. That is a law of his being. A contact with this mortal life exclusive of any other ends in the wearing-away of effective energy and a self-satisfaction that makes one useless and superficial. Only the spiritual man, striking his roots deep in infinite and eternal life, can be a true creator. But Humanism denied the spiritual man, handed over the eternal to the temporal, and took its stand by the natural man within the limited confines of the earth.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“Нельзя отказаться от любви, от права и свободы любви во имя долга, закона, во имя мнения общества и его норм, но можно отказаться во имя жалости и свободы.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“In order to see the world in a true light and everything in its proper shape, in order to contemplate the wide horizon, we must climb out of the pit of self-centeredness and rise to a height. We must see the center of being not in ourselves but in God, where it truly is, and then everything will fall into the right place. Humility in its ontological meaning is the heroic conquest of selfhood and ascent to the heights of theocentrism.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“And when there are no more classes, when society is socially democratized and unified, then there will be revealed in all its metaphysical depths the never-ending tragedy of the conflict between personality and society.”
― Nikolai A. Berdyaev

“Each one of us shares in the destiny of the world and humanity, and must accept his own portion of the general responsibility”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“Spirit is never an object; nor a spiritual reality an objective one. In the so-called objective world there's no such nature, thing, or objective reality as spirit. Hence it is easy to deny the reality of spirit. God is spirit because he is not object, because he is subject.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“Moje myślenie jest intuicyjne i aforystyczne. Nie ma w nim dyskursywnego rozwoju myśli. Niczego nie mogę rozwinąć i udowodnić. Wydaje mi się to całkowicie zbędne. Bardzo cenię i lubię Kanta, uważam go za największego z filozofów. Jednak obrastanie myśli Kanta szkolno-scholastyczną korą, ze skomplikowanymi dowodami, zawsze uważałem za zbędne i szkodliwe, zaciemniające genialną myśl. (...) Dyskursywny rozwój myśli istnieje nie dla samego poznającego, istnieje dla innych.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“La noche no es menos maravillosa que el día, no es menos de Dios, y el resplandor de las estrellas la ilumina, y la noche tiene revelaciones que el día ignora. La noche tiene más afinidad con los misterios de los orígenes que el día. El abismo no se abre más que con la noche.”
― Nikolái Berdiáyev

“The Russian Intelligentsia is a quite special and peculiar thing; as a spiritual and a social form it existed only in Russia. The Intelligentsia was an idealistic class, a class of people wholly influenced by ideas and ready to face prison, hard labour and death for the sake of their ideas”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“The idea of Slavic unity, is first of all a Russo-Polish unity”
― Nikolai A. Berdyaev

“A real reconciliation of East and West is impossible and inconceivable on the basis of a materialistic Communism, or of a materialistic Capitalism, or indeed of a materialistic Socialism. The third way will neither be "anti-Communist" nor 'anti-Capitalist'. It will recognize the truth in liberal democracy, and it will equally recognize the truth in Communism. A critique of Communism and Marxism does not entail an enmity towards Soviet Russia, just as a critique of liberal democracy is not entail enmity towards the west. . . . But the final and most important justification of a 'third way' is that there must be a place from which we may boldly testify to, and proclaim, truth, love and justice. No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

“We used to pay too little attention to utopias, or even disregard them altogether, saying with regret they were impossible of realisation. Now indeed they seem to be able to be brought about far more easily than we supposed, and we are actually faced by an agonising problem of quite another kind: how can we prevent their final realisation? ... Utopias are more realisable than those 'realist politics' that are only the carefully calculated policies of office-holders, and towards utopias we are moving. But it is possible that a new age is already beginning, in which cultured and intelligent people will dream of ways to avoid ideal states and to get back to a society that is less 'perfect' and more free.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev, The Philosophy of Freedom

“Istnieje bolesny brak odpowiedniości między moją myślą i jej słownym wyrazem.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev, Autobiografia intelektualna

“The Russians are a people in the highest degree polarized: they are a conglomeration of contradictions”
― Nikolai Berdyaev