Quote by Søren Kierkegaard: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”

You can only make sense of what has happened to you after the fact — but you cannot wait for that clarity before you act. You have to keep moving into an uncertain future, even though understanding only arrives in hindsight.

Kierkegaard wrote this in his journals in 1843, the same year he published Either/Or. Europe was on the eve of the 1848 revolutions, and Romantic philosophy was giving way to new questions about individual existence in an increasingly industrialised and politically turbulent world.

Danish philosopher and theologian widely regarded as the father of existentialism. His works, including Either/Or and The Sickness Unto Death, explored individual choice, anxiety, and authentic selfhood with a mix of philosophical rigour and literary inventiveness.