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Anarchist Quotes

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Authors List


Nikolai Berdyaev

Nikolai Berdyaev, Anarchist of Christian Existentialism

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev was born on March 18, 1874 in the Tartar metropolis Kazan, which is part of the modern-day Russian Federation. He was raised in an aristocratic military family. His works primarily revolve around issues of religion and politics - combining elements of Marxism with Christianity and existential philosophy.

Despite facing repeated exile and censorship for his criticisms against both the royalist and Marxist regimes of his time, Berdyaev continued to postulate his theories on a 'free theocracy' where human freedom could flourish untrammelled by the institutions of power. Berdyaev's principle works include 'The Philosophy of Freedom' and 'The Meaning of History.' He was a vigorous critic of the rational and theocratic tendencies in geopolitics. Nikolai Berdyaev died on March 24, 1948 in his adopted France.


Date of Birth: 1874-03-18

Date of Death: 1948-03-24

Country of Birth: Russian Empire

Political Ideas: Christian Existentialism, Personalism

Quotes Available: 9



Quotes by Nikolai Berdyaev

We used to pay too little attention to utopias, or even disregard them altogether, saying with regret they were impossible of realization. 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 realization?
The whole economic system of capitalism is an offshoot of a devouring and overwhelming lust, of a kind that can hold sway only in a society that has deliberately renounced the Christian asceticism and turned away from heaven to give itself over exclusively to earthly gratifications.
Almost all contemporary political ideologies, with their characteristic tendency to state-idolatry, are likewise largely a product of two world wars, begotten as they are of the inexorability's of fate.
Spirit, like flame, like freedom, like creativeness, is opposed to any social stagnation or any lifeless tradition.
No one today likes truth: utility and self interest have long ago been substituted for truth.
The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence of such power... the Kingdom of God is anarchy.
We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality.
Fate and freedom alike play a part in history; and there are times, as in wars and revolutions, when fate is the stronger of the two.
What one needs to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world.


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