Soren Kierkegaard — "The highest of all is not to understand the highest, but to act upon it."
The highest of all is not to understand the highest, but to act upon it.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"The true humorist does not want to be a humorist, but an earnest man."
"The greatest good to be achieved by a human being is to become a true self."
"Dread is an adventure that every man has to undergo."
"The knight of faith is the only happy man, the heir of the finite, whereas the knight of infinite resignation is a stranger and a sojourner."
"Despair is the sickness unto death."
About Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Danish philosopher and theologian considered the founder of existentialism; Either/Or (1843) and Fear and Trembling (1843) explored the leap of faith. Closely associated with Friedrich Nietzsche (his existentialist successor working in the opposite theological direction) and Fyodor Dostoevsky (literary parallel exploring faith-and-despair). For an intellectual contrast, see G.W.F. Hegel, German Idealist of the totalizing system — Kierkegaard called Hegel's system a 'palatial residence' that nobody could actually live in — his entire authorship is structured against Hegelian abstraction in favor of the existing individual's inwardness.
The standard scholarly entry points to Soren Kierkegaard's work: Joakim Garff (University of Copenhagen, Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre) — Søren Kierkegaard: A Biography (2000); Walter Lowrie (Princeton, his major postwar English translator) — A Short Life of Kierkegaard (1942); C. Stephen Evans (Baylor University, philosophy of religion) — Kierkegaard: An Introduction (2009). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Soren Kierkegaard.