Soren Kierkegaard
Soren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and parables. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a "single individual", giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking...
NationalityDanish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth5 May 1813
CityCopenhagen, Denmark
CountryDenmark
Soren Kierkegaard quotes about
Faith is holding onto uncertainties with passionate conviction.
I believe that there is a longing in my soul that searches the whole world.
It is tragic-comic to see that all this knowledge and understanding exercises no power at all over men's lives, that their lives do not express in the remotest way what they have understood, but rather the opposite.
It is (to describe it figuratively) as if an author were to make a slip of the pen, and as if this clerical error became conscious of being such. Perhaps this was no error but in a far higher sense was an essential part of the whole exposition. It is, then, as if this clerical error were to revolt against the author, out of hatred for him, were to forbid him to correct it, and were to say, "No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against thee, that thou art a very poor writer."
Knowledge is an attitude, a passion, actually an illicit attitude. For the compulsion to know is like dipsomania, erotomania, and homicidal mania, in producing a character that is out of balance. It is not at all that the scientist goes after the truth.
I stick my finger into existence.. it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? What is this thing called the world? What does this word mean?
The highest of all is not to understand the highest but to act upon it.
In the life of the individual when love awakens it is older than everything else, because when it exists it seems as if it has existed for a long time; it presupposes itself back into the distant past until all searching ends in the inexplicable origin.
The more people who believe something, the more apt it is to be wrong. The person who's right often has to stand alone.
The melancholy have the best sense of the comic, the opulent often the best sense of the rustic, the dissolute often the best sense of the moral, and the doubter often the best sense of the religious.
Do you know of any more overwhelming and humbling expression for God's condescension and extravagance towards us human beings than that He places Himself, so to say, on the same level of choice with the world, just so that we may be able to choose; that God, if language dare speak thus, woos humankind - that He, the eternally strong one, woos sapless humanity? Yet, how insignificant is the young lover's choice between her pursuers by comparison with this choice between God and the world.
Preparation for becoming attentive to Christianity does not consist in reading many books ... but in fuller immersion in existence.
Men who not religious or artists are fools.
The thinker without a paradox is like a lover without a feeling: a paltry mediocrity.