Home › Authors › Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard Quotes
1813–1855 Denmark
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish Christian philosopher and theologian, considered to be a founder of Existentialist thought and Absurdist traditions. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology and philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and parables.
Denmark Novelists Philosophers Poets Theologians Also known as: Kierkegaard, Kierkegaard, Søren, Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye, Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, Soren Kierkegaard, Soren kierkegaard
Random Søren Kierkegaard quote
209 quotes
All existential problems are passionate problems, for when existence is interpenetrated with reflection, it generates passion. To think about existential problems in such a way as to leave out the passion is tantamount to not thinking about them at all, since it is to forget the point, which is that the thinker himself is an existing individual.
Truly, if at one time it was difficult to become a Christian, I believe now it becomes more difficult year by year, because it has now become so easy to become one; there is a bit of competition only in becoming a speculative thinker. … The thesis that God has existed in human form, was born, grew up; is certainly the paradox in the strictest sense, the absolute paradox.
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments (1846)
Therefore create me! You, the most esteemed, cultured public, are in possession of nervus rerum gerendarum [the moving force to accomplish something]. Just a word from you, a promise to purchase what I write, or, if it is possible, so that everything can be in order immediately, a little advance payment – and I am an author; I shall remain one as long as this favor lasts.
Writing Sampler (1844)
What is it that is never changed even though everything is changed? It is love. And only that which never becomes something else is love, that which gives away everything and for that reason demands nothing, that which demands nothing and therefore has nothing to lose, that which blesses and blesses when it is cursed, that which loves its neighbor but whose enemy is also its neighbor, that which leaves revenge to the Lord because it takes comfort in the thought that he is even more merciful.
I see again what I thought I saw the first time, when I sent forth the little book that was compared to and in fact could best be compared to “a humble little flower under the cover of the great forest”
Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1849)
The intoxication of self-feeling is the most intense, and the height of this intoxication is most admired. Love and friendship are the very height of self-feeling, the I intoxicated in the other-I. The more securely the two I's come together to become one I, the more this united I selfishly cuts itself off from all others.
Works of Love (1847)
The genius is an omnipotent Ansich [in-itself] which as such would rock the whole world. For the sake of order, another figure appears along with him, namely, fate. Fate is nothing. It is the genius himself who discovers it, and the more profound the genius, the more profoundly he discovers fate, because that figure is merely the anticipation of providence.
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Misattributed
If you label me, you negate me.
Disputed
Topics Søren Kierkegaard is quoted on
Works