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 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: Gratitude, Prayer
The self is only that which it is in the process of becoming.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Self-Discovery, Discovery
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
It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Belief
Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Life
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
Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Adversity, Trouble
Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion—and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion… while truth again reverts to a new minority.
—Soren Kierkegaard
There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Enjoyment
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
Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Thinking, Thoughts, Thought, Reason
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: Courage, Sin, Reflection, Purpose, Fail, Perseverance, Living, Great, Experience, Life, Time, Meaning, Life and Living, Challenges, Past, Nature, Failure, Moving on
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Anxiety, Worry
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
This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness… they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Life
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
Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Idleness, Laziness
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
Adversity not only draws people together, but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Friendship
Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Identity
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
To dare is to lose your foothold” for a moment. Not to dare is to lose yourself.”
—Soren Kierkegaard
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
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Geniuses are like thunderstorms. They go against the wind, terrify people, cleanse the air.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Personality
If mankind had not embedded itself, with the momentum of centuries and the passion of habit, in the id
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Individuality
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Happiness, Men, Haste, Pleasure
It requires courage not to surrender oneself to the ingenious or compassionate counsels of despair that would induce a man to eliminate himself from the ranks of the living; but it does not follow from this that every huckster who is fattened and nourished in self-confidence has more courage than the man who yielded to despair.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Bravery, Courage
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 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
Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Boredom
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Thinking, Speech, Freedom, People, Thought
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, Trying, Risk-taking
Boredom is the root of all evil—the despairing refusal to be oneself.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Boredom, Bores
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
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
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
People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.
—Soren Kierkegaard
Topics: Tourism, Travel
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