Read the best Soren Kierkegaard quotes, sayings, and writings to give deep insight into life, faith, religion, love, truth, and other aspects.
Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and poet who lived in the 19th century.
He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential philosophers of the modern era, and his ideas continue to inspire and challenge thinkers today.
Kierkegaard’s work dealt with a wide range of philosophical and religious themes, including the nature of existence, the relationship between faith and reason, and the importance of personal choice and commitment.
Soren Kierkegaard quotes offer profound insights into the human condition, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness, personal responsibility, and meaningful choices.
His ideas continue to inspire and challenge thinkers today, and his work remains an important contribution to the fields of philosophy and theology.
Top 10 Soren Kierkegaard Quotes
- “Confidence is the present tense of hope.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.”
- “It is not where we breathe, but where we Love, that we live.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Boredom is the root of all evil – the despairing refusal to be oneself.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”
- “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
- “Trouble is the common denominator of the living. It is the great equalizer.”
- “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
- “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
- “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forwards.”
- “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true, the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
Famous Quotes By Soren Kierkegaard
- “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Hope is passion for what is possible.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Geniuses are like thunderstorms: they go against the wind, terrify people, clear the air.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him all the time.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly one you’ll never have.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
- “If anyone on the verge of actions should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “People demand freedom of speech as compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Faith is the highest passion in a human being. Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes further.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “I found I had less and less to say, until finally, I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence, the voice of God.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “The minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion.” – Soren Kierkegaard
Best Soren Kierkegaard Quotes On Life
- “Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Face the facts of being what you are, for that, is what changes what you are.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “During the first period of a man’s life, the greatest danger is not to take the risk.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “It is one thing to introduce a new doctrine into the world, it is something else to live it.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “The unhappy person is never present to themself because they always live in the past or the future.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “God creates everything out of nothing. And everything which God is to use, he first reduces to nothing.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “The truth is lived before it is understood. It must be fought for, tested, and appropriated. Truth is the way… Anyone will easily understand it if he just gives himself to it.” – Soren Kierkegaard
Notable Soren Kierkegaard Quotes On Love
- “Don’t forget to love yourself.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Once you label me you negate me.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “To love another person is to help them love God.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Once can advise comfortably from a safe port.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Unhappiness is not to love without being loved, but to be loved when one does not love.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Ulysses was not comely, but he was eloquent, Yet he fired two goddesses of the sea with love.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “It is essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love.” – Soren Kierkegaard
Insipirational Soren Kierkegaard Quotes
- “Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “If a person does not become what he understands, then he does not understand it either.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “It is wretched to have an abundance of intentions and a poverty of action, to be rich in truths and poor in virtues.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “If I could only have the experience of meeting a passionate thinker, that is, someone who honestly and honorably expressed in his life what he has understood!” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “It is better to try something and fail than to try nothing and succeed. The result may be the same, but you won’t be. We always grow more through defeats than victories.” – Soren Kierkegaard
- “A man who as a physical being 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
- “There are many people who arrive at conclusions in life much the way schoolboys do; they cheat their teachers by copying the answer book without having worked the problem themselves.” – Soren Kierkegaard
Deep Quotes From Søren Kierkegaard
- “Purity of heart is to will one thing.”
- “Do it or don’t do it – you will regret both.”
- “It is hard to believe because it is hard to obey.”
- “At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.”
- “Take a chance and you may lose. Take not a chance and you have lost already.”
- “The question is not “To be or not to be”, it is what we should be until we are not.”
- “If I could prescribe only one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence.”
- “The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.”
- “I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”
- “To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self… And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.”
- “I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.”
Soren Kierkegaard Life & Facts
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish “golden age” of intellectual and artistic activity.
Kierkegaard was known for his distinctive writing style, which often involved the use of pseudonyms and complex literary devices.
He was a philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher.
His work was deeply introspective and dealt with themes such as anxiety, despair, ethics, and the struggle to find one’s place in the world.
Kierkegaard was also a critic of the established church of his time, and he argued for a more personal, subjective approach to faith.
Despite his significant contributions to philosophy, Kierkegaard’s work was not widely recognized during his lifetime.
It was only in the decades following his death that his ideas began to gain wider acceptance and influence.
Soren Kierkegaard Philosophy
Søren Kierkegaard’s concept of the “single individual” was central to his philosophy.
He believed that each person was a unique, irreplaceable individual, and that true fulfillment and meaning in life could only be found through a personal, subjective relationship with God.
Best Soren Kierkegaard Books & Writings
Søren Kierkegaard wrote many books throughout his life, but here are five of his most influential works:
- “Fear and Trembling” (1843)
- “Either/Or” (1843)
- “The Sickness Unto Death” (1849)
- “Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments” (1846)
- “Works of Love” (1847)
Conclusion
Today, he is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the modern era, and his work continues to inspire and challenge thinkers around the world.
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