Søren Kierkegaard's influence on twentieth-century thought has been rich and varied.
Philosophers from Adorno to Wittgenstein expressed great respect for his work and
existential thinkers like Jaspers and Heidegger drew widely on his analysis of despair and freedom.
Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.
There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.
Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is not to take the risk.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.
Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.
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.
How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.
It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important.
Once you label me you negate me.
One can advise comfortably from a safe port.
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
