Soren Kierkegaard quotes

Born
5 May 1813 Copenhagen, Denmark.

Died
11 November 1855.

Occupation
Philosopher.

Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher.

One can advise comfortably from a safe port.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Once you label me you negate me.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
– Soren Kierkegaard

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
– 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.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Don’t forget to love yourself.
– Soren Kierkegaard

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

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable.
– 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

If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
– Soren Kierkegaard

The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo; the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes.
– Soren Kierkegaard

I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.
– Soren Kierkegaard

It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.
– 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

During the first period of a man’s life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Purity of heart is to will one thing.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
– Soren Kierkegaard

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
– 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

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
– 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

It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
– Soren Kierkegaard

To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Be that self which one truly is.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.
– Soren Kierkegaard

People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.
– Soren Kierkegaard

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
– Soren Kierkegaard