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

Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Reflection, Suicide

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Life, Living

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

Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whispering lacks of what might called the absolute beginning of the personal life. He lacks what at moments is indispensable for the personal life, lacks both the regeneration and rejuvenation, the cleaning baptism of irony that redeems the soul from having its life in finitude though living boldly and energetically in finitude.
—Soren Kierkegaard

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

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

I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Boredom, Bores

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

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

Boredom is the root of all evil—the despairing refusal to be oneself.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Boredom, Bores

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

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

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Belief

There is nothing of which every man is so afraid, as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Fear, Being True to Yourself, Doing Your Best

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: Optimism, Miscellaneous, Positive Attitudes, Possibilities, Realistic Expectations, Potential, Joy, Health

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

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

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

During the first period of a man’s life the greatest danger is: not to take the risk. When once the risk has really been taken, then the greatest danger is to risk too much.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Risk-taking, Trying, Risk

Teach me, O God, not to torture myself, not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection, but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Faith, Prayer

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

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

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

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

The conclusions of passion are the only reliable ones.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Instincts

To dare is to lose your foothold” for a moment. Not to dare is to lose yourself.”
—Soren Kierkegaard

If mankind had not embedded itself, with the momentum of centuries and the passion of habit, in the id
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Individuality

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

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

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

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