Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813–55) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and religious thinker. A prolific and mischievously obscure author, he is the progenitor of 20th-century existential philosophy.
Born in Copenhagen to scholarly and pious parents, Kierkegaard inherited enough money to be financially independent for the rest of his life. In 1840, he got engaged to Regine Olsen; although the two were deeply in love, he started to have doubts that he could not make Regine happy and stay true to his aspirations of philosophy. After a period of severe dilemma, Kierkegaard broke off the engagement. From then on, he lived the life of a scholarly recluse.
Kierkegaard’s work spanned not just philosophy, but also theology, psychology, literary criticism, and fiction. He believed that man exists in isolation relating only to God and that an authentic individual must sometimes stand alone against the crowd. Kierkegaard also came up the concept of “subjectivity” or “objective uncertainty” (we perceive the world and the “truth” differently) and the idea of “leap of faith” (that faith is not possible without doubt—we must doubt the existence of God to have faith in the existence of God.)
Kierkegaard wrote intricate philosophical works, which were many-sided and seemingly contradictory. He published these works under pseudonyms with the intention that he would attack them himself later. His published works include Enten-Eller (1843; Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, 1944,) Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift (1846; Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, 1941,) and Sygdommen til Døden (1849, The Sickness unto Death, 1941.)
Kierkegaard was more or less unheard of outside of Denmark in the 19th century. However, in the early 20th century, European writers and philosophers rediscovered him. He influenced writers like Henrik Ibsen, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Soren Kierkegaard
Don’t forget to love yourself.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Love
There is peace and rest and comfort in sorrow
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Sorrow
If an Arab in the desert were suddenly to discover a spring in his tent, and so would always be able to have water in abundance, how fortunate he would consider himself; so too, when a man who … is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Happiness, Thinking
The individual (no matter how well-meaning he might be, no matter how much strength he might have, if only he would use it) does not have the passion to rip himself away from either the coils of Reflection or the seductive ambiguities of Reflection; nor do the surroundings and times have any events or passions, but rather provide a negative setting of a habit of reflection, which plays with some illusory project only to betray him in the end with a way out: it shows him that the most clever thing to do is nothing at all.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Reflection
When you read God’s Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, “It is talking to me, and about me.”
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Religion, Bible
God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Saints
The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think.
—Soren Kierkegaard
The most terrible fight is not when there is one opinion against another, the most terrible is when two men say the same thing—and fight about the interpretation, and this interpretation involves a difference of quality.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Fighting, Fight, Quarrels
If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of potential—for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints; possibility never.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Wishes, Potential
If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Joy, Health, Positive Attitudes, Possibilities, Optimism, Realistic Expectations, Miscellaneous, Potential
Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Reason, Thinking, Thoughts, Thought
Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Aging, Age
Without risk, faith is an impossibility.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Belief, Perspective, Faith, Trying, Risk
Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him all the time.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
—Soren Kierkegaard
The Media is an abstraction (because a newspaper is not concrete and only in an abstract sense can be considered an individual), which in association with the passionlessness and reflection of the times creates that abstract phantom, the public, which is the actual leveler… . More and more individuals will, because of their indolent bloodlessness, aspire to become nothing, in order to become the public, this abstract whole, which forms in this ridiculous manner: the public comes into existence because all its participants become third parties. This lazy mass, which understands nothing and does nothing, this public gallery seeks some distraction, and soon gives itself over to the idea that everything which someone does, or achieves, has been done to provide the public something to gossip about… . The public has a dog for its amusement. That dog is the Media. If there is someone better than the public, someone who distinguishes himself, the public sets the dog on him and all the amusement begins. This biting dog tears up his coat-tails, and takes all sort of vulgar liberties with his leg—until the public bores of it all and calls the dog off. That is how the public levels.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Media
Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Adversity, Trouble
To stand on one leg and prove God’s existence is a very different thing from going down on one’s knees and thanking him.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Prayer, Gratitude
Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth—look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Enjoyment
The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Tyranny, Perspective
In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known—no wonder, then, that I return the love.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Depression
I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations—one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it—you will regret both.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Disappointment, Regret, Remorse
The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. – is sure to be noticed.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Self-Discovery
At one time my only wish was to be a police official. It seemed to me to be an occupation for my sleepless intriguing mind. I had the idea that there, among criminals, were people to fight: clever, vigorous, crafty fellows. Later I realized that it was good that I did not become one, for most police cases involve misery and wretchedness—not crimes and scandals.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Police, Control
People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Freedom, Thinking
Be that self which one truly is. – Kierkegaard, Soren
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Self-love
Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Patience
Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Life
Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Identity
To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Cheating
To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self … and to venture in the highest sense is precisely to become conscious of one’s self.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Business
It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Life and Living, Living, Challenges, Failure, Great, Perseverance, Time, Experience, Purpose, Life, Fail, Sin, Past, Meaning, Reflection, Courage, Nature, Moving on
Any truth is only true up to a certain point. When one oversteps the mark, it becomes a non-truth.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Truth
Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Faith
How ironical that it is by means of speech that man can degrade himself below the level of dumb creation—for a chatterbox is truly of a lower category than a dumb creature.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Conversation
Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Science, Philosophy
Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Living, Life
It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Belief
Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Marriage
Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic—if it is pulled out I shall die.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Sorrow, Sadness
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