"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."

Experience

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Insight & Reflection

This reflection on experience by Soren Kierkegaard resonates across generations. It highlights a fundamental truth about human nature: our continuous search for meaning in experience is what ultimately defines our character and our path forward.

About Soren Kierkegaard

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, Christian theologian, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christianity, morality, ethics, psychology, love, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues around how one lives as a "single individual", highlighting the importance of authenticity, personal choice and commitment, and the duty to love. Kierkegaard prioritized concrete human reality over abstract thinking.

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Editorial Note: This quote is curated and fact-checked by the Quotes Archive Editorial Team. Verified Literature Specialist.

More by Soren Kierkegaard

"The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you."

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"The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo."

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More about Experience

"Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents. They don't tell their real parents about that - you don't want to tell Mom and Dad."

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"Knowledge is the gathering of scattered facts; wisdom is the synthesis of lived experience — an essential principle for the reflective life."

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"A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption it is not a symbol, but a fraud."

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