Q0076

Søren Kierkegaard

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Thinker Søren Kierkegaard
School Proto-Existentialism
Source The Concept of Anxiety
Theme Freedom
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with The Concept of Anxiety, within the tradition of Proto-Existentialism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of freedom, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Søren Kierkegaard's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Søren Kierkegaard. (n.d.). Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0076

MLA: Søren Kierkegaard. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0076.

Chicago: Søren Kierkegaard. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0076.

Same thinker

More from Søren Kierkegaard

  1. Despair is the sickness unto death — the self's refusal to be itself.
  2. Marry, and you will regret it; do not marry, and you will also regret it.
  3. Despair is not to will to be oneself — or else to will to be oneself.
  4. The self is a relation that relates itself to itself.
  5. It is quite true what philosophy says, that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards.

All quotations by Søren Kierkegaard

Same theme

More on freedom

  1. Extreme freedom seems to change into nothing but extreme slavery.
  2. Of things, some are in our power, and some are not.
  3. It is not things that disturb people, but their judgments about things.
  4. He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
  5. If you are distressed by anything external, it is not the thing itself that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.

Browse the freedom theme