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Søren Kierkegaard
213 quotes
“If the ethical – that is, social morality – is the highest ... then no categories are needed other than the Greek philosophical categories.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now just as the historical gives occasion for the contemporary to become a disciple, but only it must be noted through receiving the condition from the God himself, since otherwise we speak Socratically, so the testimony of contemporaries gives occasion for each successor to become a disciple, but only it must be noted through receiving the condition from the God himself.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For whoever has what he has from the God himself clearly has it at first hand; and he who does not have it from the God himself is not a disciple. Let us assume that it is otherwise, that the contemporary generation of disciples had received the condition from the God, and that the subsequent generations were to receive it from these contemporaries – what would follow?”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Translated by Todd Nichol along with Prefaces 1997”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In an age as agitated as ours, it no longer suffices just to be advertised in the newspaper. To be advertised in this way is the same thing as being consigned to oblivion. If one is to be noticed, once must as least appear on the first page under a hand that points to and, as it were, announces or advertises the advertisement.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Therefore create me! You, the most esteemed, cultured public, are in possession of nervus rerum gerendarum [the moving force to accomplish something]. Just a word from you, a promise to purchase what I write, or, if it is possible, so that everything can be in order immediately, a little advance payment – and I am an author; I shall remain one as long as this favor lasts.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When one merely states that one has many subscribers and keeps on saying it, then one gets many; just as when one sheep goes to water, the next one also goes, and when it is continually said of a large flock of sheep that they go hither and yon to water, then the rest must also go, so people believe that it must be the demand of the times, that for the sake of use and custom – they must also subscribe.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freedom's possibility is not the ability to choose the good or the evil. The possibility is to be able. In a logical system, it is convenient to say that possibility passes over into actuality. However, in actuality it is not so convenient, and an intermediate term is required. The intermediate term is anxiety, but it no more explains the qualitative leap than it can justify it ethically. Anxiety is neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity, but in itself.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dogmatics must be designed in this way. Above all, every science must vigorously lay hold of its own beginning and not live in complicated relations with other sciences. If dogmatics begins by wanting to explain sinfulness or by wanting to prove its actuality, no dogmatics will come out of it, but the entire existence of dogmatics will become problematic and vague.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Alas, time comes and time goes, it subtracts little by little; then it deprives a person of a good, the loss of which he indeed feels, and his pain is great. Alas, and he does not discover that long ago it has already taken away from him the most important thing of all-the capacity to make a resolution-and it has made him so familiar with this condition that there is no consternation over it, the last thing that could help gain new power for renewed resolution!”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death induces the sensual person to say: Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we shall die – but this is sensuality's cowardly lust for life, that contemptible order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink instead of eating and drinking in order to live.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was brought up in the Christian religion, and although I can scarcely sanction all the improper attempts to gain the emancipation of woman, all paganlike reminiscences also seem foolish to me. My brief and simple opinion is that woman is certainly as good as man-period. Any more discursive elaboration of the difference between the sexes or deliberation on which sex is superior is an idle intellectual occupation for loafers and bachelors.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stages on Life's Way, 1845 (Hong) p. 124
“Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stages on Life's Way, 1845 p. 363-364
“A son is a mirror in which the father sees himself reflected, and the father is a mirror in which the son sees himself as he will be in the future.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) first seen 1845 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stages on Life's Way, 1845
“To understand oneself in existence is the Christian principle, except that this self has received much richer and much more profound qualifications that are even more difficult to understand together with existing. The believer is a subjective thinker, and the difference, is only between the simple person and the simple wise person. Here again the oneself is not humanity in general, subjectivity in general, and other such things, whereas everything becomes easy inasmuch as the difficulty is removed and the whole matter is shifted over into the shadow play of abstraction.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where is the boundary for the single individual in his concrete existence between what is lack of will and what is lack of ability; what is indolence and earthly selfishness and what is the limitation of finitude? For an existing person, when is the period of preparation over, when this question will not arise again in all its initial, troubled severity; when is the time in existence that is indeed a preparation? Let all the dialecticians convene-they will not be able to decide this for a particular individual in concreto.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is there anything we cannot contrive to call the demands of the times, and is there anything that does not acquire a certain prestige by being the demand of the times? But for decisive religious categories to become the demand for the times is eo ipso a contradiction. “The times” is too abstract a category to be able as claimant to demand the decisive religious categories that belong specifically to individuality and particularity; loud collective demands en mass for what can be shared only by the single individual in particularity, in solitariness, in silence, cannot be made.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review. By Soren Kierkegaard, 1846 edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong 1978 Princeton University Press P. 21
“A Roman emperor sitting at the table surrounded by his bodyguard is a magnificent sight, but when the reason is fear, the magnificence pales. So also when the individual does not dare stand taciturnly by his word, does not stand freely and confidently on the pedestal of a conscious act, but is surrounded by a host of deliberations before and after that render him incapable of getting his eye on the action.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review. By Soren Kierkegaard, 1846 edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong 1978 Princeton University Press P. 68
“The believer humanly comprehends how heavy the suffering is, but in faith’s wonder that it is beneficial to him, he devoutly says: It is light. Humanly he says: It is impossible, but he says it again in faith’s wonder that what he humanly cannot understand is beneficial to him. In other words, when sagacity is able to perceive the beneficialness, then faith cannot see God; but when in the dark night of suffering sagacity cannot see a handbreadth ahead of it, then faith can see God, since faith sees best in the dark.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Uplifting Discourses in Various Spirits in a section of text entitled “The Gospel of Suffering.” As quoted in: Gordon Marino (February 10, 2021): “Faith sees best in the dark”: Joe Biden, Søren Kierkegaard, and the educ…
“If it is God who gives the spirit of power and strength, then it is also the same God who gives “the spirt of self-control,” and if ignoble cowardice and fear of people are just as detestable in any age, the excess of eager enthusiasm, “zeal without wisdom,” are no less corrupting and at times are fundamentally just as detestable, just as blasphemous.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People are scarcely aware that it is a slavery they are creating; they forget this in their zeal to make people free by overthrowing dominions. They are scarcely aware that it is slavery; how could it be possible to be a slave in relation to equals?”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For as only one thing is necessary, and as the theme of the talk is the willing of only one thing: hence the consciousness before God of one's eternal responsibility to be an individual is that one thing necessary.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, 1847 p. 197-198
“How could one speak properly about love if you were forgotten, you God of love, source of all love in heaven and on earth; you who spared nothing but in love gave everything; you who are love, so that one who loves is what he is only by being in you.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If it were so, as conceited sagacity, proud of not being deceived, thinks, that we should believe nothing that we cannot see with our physical eyes, then we first and foremost ought to give up believing in love. ... We can be deceived by believing what is untrue, but we certainly are also deceived by not believing what is true. ... Which deception is more dangerous?”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Spontaneous love can reach the point of despair, shows that it is in despair, that even when it is happy it loves with the power of despair.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Forgetting when God does it in relation to sin, is the opposite of creating, since to create is to bring forth from nothing and to forget is to take back into nothing. What is hidden from my eyes, that I have never seen; but what is hidden behind my back, that I have seen. The one who loves forgives in this way; he forgives, he forgets, he blots out the sin, in love he turns toward the one he forgives; but when he turns toward him, he of course, cannot see what is lying behind his back.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have needed God every day to defend myself against the abundance of thoughts.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have never definitely broken with Christianity nor renounced it. To attack it has never been my thought. No, from the time when there could be any question of the employment of my powers, I was firmly determined to employ them all to defend Christianity, or in any case to present it in its true form.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Point of View for My Work as An Author, Soren Kierkegaard, translated by Walter Lowrie 1939, 1962 P. 77
“This little book (which in view of the circumstances under which it is issued reminds me of my first and more especially of the first to my first, the Preface to the Two Edifying Discourses of 1843, which came out immediately after Either/Or) will, as I hope, recall this to ‘that single individual whom I with joy and gratitude call my reader’: ‘it desires to remain in retirement, as it was in concealment it had its origin – a little flower in the cover of a great forest.’ Preface. P. 313”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“now, in the solemn silence before God with the lilies and the birds, where accordingly there is nobody at all present, where accordingly there is no other intercourse for thee but with God-there indeed the rule holds good: either hold to Him/or despise Him. There is no excuse, for no one else is present, in any case no one is present in such a wise that thou canst hold to him without despising God; for precisely there in the silence it is clear how close God is to thee. P. 334”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Be attentive therefore, according to the instruction of the Gospel, to learn obedience from the lily and the bird. Be not affrighted, do no despair, when thou comparest thy life with these teachers. There is nothing to despair about, for indeed thou shalt learn from them; and the Gospel first comforts thee by telling thee that God is the God of patience, and then it adds: 'Thou shalt learn from the lilies and the birds, learn to be absolutely obedient like the lilies and the birds, learn not to serve two masters; for no man can serve two masters, he must either ... or. P. 343”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“a. Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth? by H.H.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These two essays probably will essentially be able to interest only theologians. (Preface)”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He lived year after year. He attended only to himself and to God and this picture-but he did not understand himself.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was extremely important to his contemporaries, who wanted nothing more than to see in him the Expected One; they wanted almost to press it upon him and and to force him into the role - but that he then refuses to be that!”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My doubt goes like this: How could the Loving One have the heart to let human beings become so guilty that they got his murder on their consciences?”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can understand myself in believing, although in addition I can in a relative misunderstanding comprehend the human aspect of this life: but comprehend faith or comprehend Christ, I cannot.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“b. The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle. by H.H.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What, exactly, have the errors of exegesis and philosophy done in order to confuse Christianity, and how have they confused Christianity? Quite briefly and categorically, they have simply forced back the sphere of paradox-religion into the sphere of aesthetics, and in consequence have succeeded in brings Christian terminology to such a pass that terms which, so long as they remain within their sphere, are qualitative categories, can be put to almost any use as clever expressions.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Of The Difference Between A Genius And An Apostle, Alexander Dru translation 1962 p. 89
“A genius and an Apostle are qualitatively different, they are definitions which each belong in their own spheres: the sphere of immanence, and the sphere of transcendence.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If God stops a man on the road, and calls him with a revelation and sends him armed with divine authority among men, they say to him; from whom dost thou come? He answers: from God. But now God cannot help his messenger physically like a king, who gives him soldiers or policemen, or his ring or his signature, which is known to all; in short, God cannot help men by providing them with physical certainty that an Apostle is an Apostle-which would, moreover, be nonsense. Even miracles, if the Apostle has that gift, give no physical certainty; for the miracle is the object of faith.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Between God and man there is and remains an eternal, essential, qualitative difference. The paradoxical relationship (which, quite rightly, cannot be thought, but only believed) appears when God appoints a particular man to divine authority, in relation, be it carefully noted, to that which has entrusted to him.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us suppose that a man believes in eternal life on Christ's word. In that case he believes without any fuss about being profound and searching and philosophical and racking his brains.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the genius is an artist, then he accomplishes his work as art, but neither he nor his work of art has a telos outside him.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Someone in despair despairs over something. So, for a moment, it seems, but only for a moment. That same instant the true despair shows itself, or despair in its true guise. In despairing over something he was really despairing over himself, and he wants now to be rid of himself.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This fact, that the opposite of sin is by no means virtue, has been overlooked. The latter is partly a pagan view, which is content with a merely human standard, and which for that very reason does not know what sin is, that all sin is before God. No, the opposite of sin is faith.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Out of love, God becomes man. He says: Here you see what it is to be a human being; but he adds: Take care, for I am also God — blessed is he who takes no offense at me.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated by Howard V. Hong and EdnaH. Hong (1980)
“The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife etc., is sure to be noticed.”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I see again what I thought I saw the first time, when I sent forth the little book that was compared to and in fact could best be compared to “a humble little flower under the cover of the great forest”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface Three Discourses at Friday Communion November 14, 1849 Hong translation 1997 P. 111 (From Without Authority)