Quotations

"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."

— Nikolai Berdyaev, Russian philosopher, born 1874

"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."

— Nikolai Berdyaev, Russian philosopher, born 1874

"Victory over fear is the first spiritual duty of man."

— Nikolai Berdyaev, Russian philosopher, born 1874

"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."

— Nikolai Berdyaev, Russian philosopher, born 1874

"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."

— Nikolai Berdyaev, Russian philosopher, born 1874

"The physical union of the sexes only intensifies man's sense of solitude."

— Nikolai Berdyaev, Russian philosopher, born 1874

"The World is not an idea as asserted by philosophers who have dedicated their entire lives to the exploration of ideas. First and foremost the world is passion. But passion is associated with sadness. Sadness does not only arise from death which makes us face the Eternity, but also from life which causes us to confront the Time."

— Nikolai Berdyaev, Russian philosopher, born 1874

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

— Nikolai Berdyaev, Russian philosopher, born 1874

"She told us that evil rarely looked like evil when it first arrived. It could look like innovation and progress and prosperity, courage even, but more than anything it looked, to some, like a solution--a solution to the secret problem they believed had gone too long unaddressed. They felt as though they had been speaking a hidden language among themselves, and then a man or a woman in a suit stood on a stage and addressed cheering masses in that very same language, hidden no longer."

— Laura van den Berg, American author, born 1983

"Dreams are, by definition, cursed with short life spans."

— Candice Bergen, American actress, born 1946

"I may not be a great actress but I've become the greatest at screen orgasms. Ten seconds of heavy breathing, roll your head from side to side, simulate a slight asthma attack and die a little."

— Candice Bergen, American actress, born 1946

"A large nose is the mark of a witty, courteous, affable, generous and liberal man."

— Cyrano de Bergerac, French playwright, born 1619

"The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men's apples and head their cabbages."

— Cyrano de Bergerac, French playwright, born 1619

"Mercy to animals, means mercy to mankind."

— Henry Bergh, American activist, born 1813