Søren Kierkegaard on Knowledge
1813–1855 Denmark
← All quotes by Søren Kierkegaard
8 quotes
It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are.
The expectancy of an eternal salvation will reconcile everyone with his neighbor, with his friend, and with his enemy in an understanding of the essential.
One understands only in proportion to becoming himself that which he understands.
The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it.
Philosophical Fragments (1844)
What feelings, understanding and will a person has depends in the last resort upon what imagination he has — how he represents himself to himself, that is, upon imagination.
The Sickness unto Death (1849)
To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and the way he understands it.
One must learn to know oneself before knowing anything else (gnocchi seauton). Not until a person has inwardly understood himself and then sees the course he is to take does his life gain peace and meaning.
Experience certainly has long known how to think of some cheer for the troubled, but, as is natural, it does not know a joy that passes all understanding. Experience knows all the many inventions of the human heart, but a rapture that did not arise in any man’s heart it does not know.