Soren Kierkegaard — "The most tremendous energy of which the world is capable is the spiritual energy…"
The most tremendous energy of which the world is capable is the spiritual energy of a man who is in despair.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"The more one thinks of them, the more one feels that the most beautiful things in the world are those which are most absurd."
"There is nothing more dangerous than a man who has nothing to lose."
"To be a Christian is the most terrible of all things, if one really means it."
"The ethical is the universal, and the universal is the ethical."
"The true is not the system, but the individual."
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.