I have long been a fan of Søren Kierkegaard, not as the alleged founder of Transcendentalism, but as one who sought to be an honest man and to say things as they are. Ironically, I don’t think that Kierkegaard would have anything good to say about the various brands of Transcendentalism. They ride his coat-tails with nothing like the kind of humble honesty he espoused.

Here are a few insightful quotes attributed to the great philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.

“Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd, even though he addressed himself to all. He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. Therefore everyone who will genuinely serve the truth is by that very fact a martyr. To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. But no witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd.”

“The more people who believe something, the more apt it is to be wrong. The person who’s right often has to stand alone.”

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”

“People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.”

“The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, not heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism – no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity served up sweet. There is nothing that so insidiously displaces the majestic as cordiality.”

“Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion — and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion… while truth again reverts to a new minority.”

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” 

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” 

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” 

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”