Danish Philosopher Quotes

Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.

As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard noted, life can only be understood backwards—but it must be lived forwards.

To paraphrase one of the greatest philosophers of our time-Winnie-the-Pooh-when asked how to spell a certain emotion, "You don't spell it, you feel it.

Often we have to feel dissatisfied and anxious and terrible for a long time before we’ll admit to the truth that we should be doing something else. Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher, wrote about how anxiety is a necessary emotion that should be listened to—it is cuing you that change is needed. It is a feeling of uprooting, which is unsettling, but it prepares you for action. Often one must feel the anxiety and the instability in order to make great changes. So it’s time to leave what you’ve been doing and wander around in the dark for a while. You have to go find what does actually satisfy you. It is the start of a journey, and the thing you are searching for won’t be obvious immediately.

Life must be lived forwards but can only be understood backwards. – Soren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Danish Philosopher and Theologian

The Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard believed that boredom was the root of all evil. In other words, boredom isn’t just boring. It’s wrong. You cannot be in the presence of God and be bored at the same time. For that matter, you cannot be in the will of God and be bored at the same time. If you follow in the footsteps of Jesus, it will be anything but boring.

Neo-orthodoxy’s defining insight, taken from the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, was that people and God are known by personal encounter, not by rational analysis.11 The revelation of God comes not in an inspired book, but in the person of Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate.12 The Bible is a witness to Christ.

The judicious words of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the first existentialist philosopher, are apropos to end this lumbering manuscript. 1. “One must learn to know oneself before knowing anything else.” 2. “Life always expresses the results of our dominate thoughts.” 3. “Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.” 4. “Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.” 5. “Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.” 6. “Don’t forget to love yourself.” 7. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” 8. “Life has its own hidden forces, which you can only discover by living.” 9. “The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, or read about, nor seen, but if one will, are to be lived.” 10. “Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.” 11. “It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate on only what is most significant and important.” 12. “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.” 13. “Since my earliest childhood, a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic, if it is pulled out I shall die.” 14. “A man who as a physical being is always turned to the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside of him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.” 15. “Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend into a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.” Kierkegaard warned, “The greatest hazard of all, losing the self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. – is sure to be noticed.” Kierkegaard said that the one method to avoid losing oneself is to live joyfully in the moment, which he described as “to be present in oneself in truth,” which in turn requires “to be today, in truth be today.

He made the arrangements, the summer passed, and he went to Berlin to study. When he returned at the end of his year, he brought back a new blend: the methods of German phenomenology, mixed with ideas from the earlier Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and others, set off with the distinctively French seasoning of his own literary sensibility. He applied phenomenology to people’s lives in a more exciting, personal way than its inventors had ever thought to do, and thus made himself the founding father of a philosophy that became international in impact, but remained Parisian in flavour: modern existentialism. The

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” concluded the seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal. The nineteenth-century Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard prescribed quiet to remedy “all the ills of the world.” The twentieth-century monk Thomas Merton embraced monastic silence as a way of coming closer to God.

Hume’s purported fideism had serious impact on some religious thinkers. One of these, the German philosopher J. G. Hamann, decided that Hume, intentionally or not, was the greatest voice of religious orthodoxy—for insisting that there was no rational basis for religious belief, and that there was no rational evidence for Christianity. When the Dialogues appeared, Hamann became quite excited; he translated the first and last dialogues into German so that Immanuel Kant might read them and become a serious Christian. Hamann’s use of Hume as the voice of orthodoxy led the great Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard to become the most important advocate of fideistic Christianity in the nineteenth century. So, although most of Hume’s influence has been in creating doubts and leading thinkers to question accepted religious views, he also played an important role in the development of fideistic orthodoxy, culminating in Kierkegaard’s views.

As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard noted, life can only be understood backwards—but it must be lived forwards.

the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard noted, life can only be understood backwards—but it must be lived forwards.

When I think of solitude, I think of an anecdote from With the Door Open: My Experience by the late Danish religious philosopher Johannes Anker Larsen: “The most comprehensive formula for human culture which I know was given by the old peasant who, on his death bed, obtained from his son this one promise: to sit every day for half an hour alone in the best room.

Danish philosopher called Søren Kierkegaard: ‘Life can be understood only backward, but it must be lived forward.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER THE Royal Physician’s Visit PER OLOV ENQUIST Translated from the Swedish by Tiina Nunnally Set in Denmark in the 1760s, The Royal Physician’s Visit magnificently recasts the dramatic era of Danish history when Johann Friedrich Struensee, a German doctor from Altona, student of Enlightenment philosophers Diderot and Voltaire, and court physician to mad young King Christian, stepped through the aperture history had opened for him and became for two years the holder of absolute power in Denmark. Dr. Struensee, tall, handsome, and charismatic, introduced hundreds of reforms, many of which would become hallmarks of the French Revolution twenty years later, including freedom of the press and improvement of the treatment of the peasantry. He also took young Queen Caroline Mathilde—unsatisfied by her unstable, childlike husband—as his mistress. He was a brilliant intellectual and brash reformer, yet Struensee lacked the cunning and subtlety of a skilled politician and, most tragically, lacked the talent to choose the right enemies at court, a flaw which would lead to his torture and execution. An international sensation sold in twenty countries, The Royal Physician’s Visit is a view from the seat of absolute power, a gripping tale, vividly and entertainingly told. Enquist’s talent is in full force as he brilliantly explores the connections that will always run between political theory and practice, power, sex, love, and the life of the mind. “A great book, a powerful book—it effortlessly and self-confidently surmounts the standard works of fiction.” —Die Zeit “Incomparably exciting in its uncompromising lucidity and at the same time unsettling.” —Suddeutsche Zeitung “Time and time again the story takes to the air on the wings of fantasy … a magnificent adventure.” —Upsala Nya Tidning “The erotic scenes are among the most beautiful I have read in modern literature.” —Kvällsposten

Following the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, he suggests that (1) prudential, (2) moral, and (3) religious reason mark the three stages of a journey on life’s way – a spiritual and moral journey. On this journey we move from selfish motivations to selfless ones as we grow spiritually. We begin in a pre-moral state of consciousness, move through the moral, and finally into the spiritual or religious. This third level enables one to live the ethical life with selfless compassion. A

Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of world you want. —Anna Lappe, author and activist • Do a quick review of the money you spend each month: How much is spent on your children’s dreams? Your spouse’s dreams? The dreams of your extended family, friends, the world? How much is spent on yours? • How can we harness Charles Dickens’ advice to make a down payment on our own dreams? • If you do not currently generate paid income, are any funds in your household budget allocated to you? Are you comfortable with the arrangement you have? To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself. —Søren Kierkegaard, nineteenth-century Danish philosopher • As you think about making space for your dream, are you finding yourself uncomfortable, unnerved, even physically sick?

Life can only be understood backward; but it must be lived forwards,” said the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.

Remember Friedrich Nietzsche, from earlier in our journey. “Only thoughts which come from walking have any value,” he maintained. Søren Kierkegaard felt similarly. “I have walked myself into my best thoughts,” remarked the Danish philosopher. Walking is “gymnastics for the mind,” observed the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. “I am unable to reflect when I am not walking; the moment I stop, I think no more, and as soon as I am again in motion, my head resumes its workings,” averred the Swiss-born philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The French philosopher and essayist Michel de Montaigne lamented that his thoughts often came to him when he was on the move, at moments when “I have nothing to jot them down on”; this was wont to happen “especially on my horse, the seat of my widest musings.

As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard noted, life can only be understood backwards—but it must be lived forwards. Looking back, you can always see exactly when you should have bought and sold your stocks. But don’t let that fool you into thinking you can see, in real time, just when to get in and out.

As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote: “It is perfectly true … that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.

In his work The Sickness Unto Death, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard explains that the most common form of human despair is not being who you are.21 Consider the tragic self-identification of a generation of Israelites, who had witnessed God’s miraculous presence and provision under the leadership of Moses, when they looked with fear on the inhabitants of the land promised to them by God: “We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight” (Num. 13:33 KJV, emphasis added).

Concerned about attitudes toward worship and practices in worship in the churches of his time, Søren Kierkegaard, a nineteenth-century Danish philosopher/theologian, compared what was taking place in the theater and what was happening in Christian worship. In a theater, actors, prompted by people offstage, perform for their audiences. To his dismay, Kierkegaard found that this theatrical model dominated the worship practices of many churches. A minister was viewed as the on-stage actor, God as the offstage prompter, and the congregation as the audience. Unfortunately, that understanding of worship remains as prevalent as it is wrong. Each ingredient of the theatrical model mentioned by Kierkegaard is an essential component in Christian worship. Crucial, though, is a proper identification of the role of each one. In authentic worship, the actor is, in fact, many actors and actresses—the members of the congregation. The prompter is the minister, if singular, or, if plural, all of the people who lead in worship (choir members, instrumentalists, soloists, readers, prayers, preachers). The audience is God. Always, without exception, the audience is God! If God is not the audience in any given service, Christian worship does not take place. If worship does occur and God is not the audience, all present participate in the sin of idolatry.3

In his attempt to discover own self, the client typically uses the relationship to explore, to examine the various aspects of his own experience, to recognize and face up to the deep contradictions which he often discovers. He learns how much of his behavior, even how much of the feeling he experiences, is not real, is not something which flows from the genuine reactions of his organism but is a facade, a front, behind which he has been hiding. He discovers how much of his life is guided by what he thinks he should be, not by what he is. Often he discovers that he exists only in response to the demands of others, that he seems to have no self of his own, that he is only trying to think, and feel, and behave in the way that others believe he ought to think, and feel and behave. In this connection I have been astonished to find how accurately the Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, pictured the dilemma of the individual more than a century ago, with keen psychological insight. He points out that the most common despair is to be in despair at not choosing, or willing, to be oneself; but that the deepest form of despair is to choose "to be another than himself." On the other hand "to will to be that self which one truly is, is indeed the opposite of despair," and this choice is the deepest responsibility of man. As I read some of his writings I almost feel that he must have listened in on the statements made by our clients as they search and explore for the reality of self--often a painful and troubling search. This exploration becomes even more disturbing when they find themselves involved in removing the false faces which they had not known were false face. They begin to engage in the frightening task of exploring the turbulent and sometimes violent feelings within themselves. To remove a mask which you had thought was part of your real self can be a deeply disturbing experience, yet when there is freedom to think and feel and be, the individual moves toward such a goal.

Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, summed up in a playful, but bleakly realistic and exasperated, outburst in his masterpiece, Either/Or: ‘Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.’ We deserve pity; we will make disastrous decisions, but we can – says Kierkegaard – be consoled by a bitter truth: we have no better options, for the conditions of existence are intrinsically rather than accidentally frustrating.