The Wisdom Letter #168

5 quotes from Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

✹ For today's Wisdom Letter, we have carefully curated five bite-sized quotes from the Danish theologian and philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855).

Quote № 01:

“What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

Quote № 02:

“To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and the way he understands it.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

Quote № 03:

“It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

Quote № 04:

“It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

Quote № 05:

“It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

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✺ Today’s Questions

Three philosophical questions to foster your curiosity:

Question № 01:

Does the act of teaching necessarily transform the teacher, and if so, does this mean that education is a mutual, rather than hierarchical, process?

Question № 02:

If it is our duty to recognize the limits of understanding, how should we approach phenomena that lie beyond reason or comprehension, such as faith, death, or infinity?

Question № 03:

If life can only be understood in retrospect but must be lived in the present, how can one make meaningful decisions without the clarity hindsight provides?

✽ Thank you for reading today’s Wisdom Letter.

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