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

Soren Kierkegaard

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Soren Kierkegaard
Age: 42 †
Born: 1813
Born: January 1
Died: 1855
Died: January 1
Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Theologian
Writer
København
Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
Victor Eremita
Climacus
Anti-Climacus
Sören Aaby Kierkegaard
Believe
Objectively
Grasping
Precisely
God
Capable
Cannot
Must

More quotes by Soren Kierkegaard

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There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse.
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Are you not aware that there comes a midnight hour when everyone must unmask...
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It will be easy for us the first time we receive that ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) and then go through all the mazes of the labyrinth (life) and kill the monster. But how many there are who plunge into life (the labyrinth) without taking that precaution?
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Christianity demands the crucifixion of the intellect.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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.
Soren Kierkegaard
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The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.
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The only analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a Christian (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident that the others are still less than I.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Only the noble of heart are called to difficulty.
Soren Kierkegaard
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...the reason for [this age's] anxiety and unrest is because in one direction, 'truth' increases in scope and quantity - via science and technology - while in the other, certainty and confidence steadily decline. Our age is a master in developing truths while being wholly indifferent to certitude. It lacks confidence in the good.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Most people believe that the Christian commandments, e.g. to love one's neighbor as oneself, are intentionally a little too severe - like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning.
Soren Kierkegaard
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It is not the path which is the difficulty rather, it is the difficulty which is the path.
Soren Kierkegaard
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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
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Spirit is the third, yet in such a way that one can speak of a synthesis only when the spirit is posited.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness I have walked myself into my best thoughts.
Soren Kierkegaard
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There can be no faith without risk.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it?
Soren Kierkegaard
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It is a very curious thing about superstition. One would expect that the man who had once seen his morbid dreams were not fulfilled would abandon them for the future but on the contrary they grow even stronger just as the love of gambling increases in a man who has once lost in a lottery.
Soren Kierkegaard
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A genius may perhaps be a century ahead of his age and hence stands there as a paradox, but in the end, the race will assimilate what was once a paradox, so it is no longer paradoxical.
Soren Kierkegaard
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A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to the general applause of wits who believe it's a joke.
Soren Kierkegaard
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Talent warms-up the given (as they say in cookery) and makes it apparent genius brings something new. But our time lets talent pass for genius. They want to abolish the genius, deify the genius, and let talent forge ahead.
Soren Kierkegaard