Soren Kierkegaard — "The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature …"
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
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More from Soren Kierkegaard
"If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints,…"
"The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen, but, if one will, are to be lived."
"The aesthetic individual is the one who lives in the moment, for the moment, and with the moment."
"The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply: Create silence! Bring men to silence!"
"People understand me so little that they do not even understand when I complain of being misunderstood."
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.