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What, then, is the absurd? The absurd is that the eternal truth has come into existence in time, that God has come into existence, has been born, has grown up. etc., has come into existence exactly as an individual human being, indistinguishable from any other human being, inasmuch as all immediate recognizability is pre-Socratic paganism and from the Jewish point of view is idolatry.

— Søren Kierkegaard

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Philosophy

More quotes by Søren Kierkegaard

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.

Freedom succumbs to dizziness. Further than this, psychology cannot and will not go.

The Concept of Anxiety (1844)

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

Either/Or (1843)

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are.

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Søren Kierkegaard (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.