Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Soren Kierkegaard (Danish Philosopher, Theologian)

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

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

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

The greatest danger is not to take the risk.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Value of Time, Time Management

Father in Heaven! When the thought of thee wakes in our hearts let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Prayer

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
—Soren Kierkegaard

What our age lacks is not reflection, but passion.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Passion

Geniuses are like thunderstorms. They go against the wind, terrify people, cleanse the air.
—Soren Kierkegaard

I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Sleep, Genius

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 difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.
—Soren Kierkegaard

Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Life

Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Ideas

Any truth is only true up to a certain point. When one oversteps the mark, it becomes a non-truth.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Truth

The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think.
—Soren Kierkegaard

It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Concentration

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Idleness, Laziness

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

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: Philosophy, Science

Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Ideas

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, Quarrels, Fight

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Prayer

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.
—Soren Kierkegaard

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: Sadness, Sorrow

Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life’s relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Adversity

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Anxiety, Worry

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Thinking, People, Thought, Speech, Freedom

The present generation, wearied by its chimerical efforts, relapses into complete indolence. Its condition is that of a man who has only fallen asleep towards morning: first of all come great dreams, then a feeling of laziness, and finally a witty or clever excuse for remaining in bed.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Laziness

Once you label me you negate me.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Names, Identity

Be that self which one truly is. – Kierkegaard, Soren.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Self-love

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
—Soren Kierkegaard

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