Soren Kierkegaard — "The most dreadful thing that can happen to a man is to become a number."
The most dreadful thing that can happen to a man is to become a number.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"To be a human being means to be a spirit."
"The task is to understand myself, to understand what I am to do, to see what God really wants me to do."
"My melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known."
"The dialectic of despair is this, that the despairing self is unable to get rid of itself."
"The most common deception of all is the deception that one is not deceived."
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.