“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Oscar Wilde · Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892
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Life must be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
About this quote
Meaning
Kierkegaard is pointing to a fundamental tension in human experience: we can only make sense of our lives by looking back at what has already happened, yet we have no choice but to keep moving forward into an uncertain future. Understanding comes after the fact, but living cannot wait for that understanding. The two directions pull against each other, and that tension is something every person must simply endure.
Context
Kierkegaard recorded this thought in his personal journals in 1843, a period of intense philosophical and personal reflection for him. The journals were private working documents rather than polished publications, and they capture his thinking in a raw, exploratory form. This particular entry has since become one of the most widely quoted passages from his journals, partly because it distills a deeply personal feeling into a universally recognizable observation about time and self-knowledge.
About the author
Soren Kierkegaard was a nineteenth-century Danish philosopher and writer, widely regarded as one of the founding figures of existentialist thought. He wrote extensively about the nature of individual experience, faith, anxiety, and the choices that define a human life. Much of his work appeared under pseudonyms, allowing him to explore ideas from multiple perspectives. He died in 1855 at the age of forty-two, leaving behind a body of work that grew enormously in influence well after his lifetime.
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Share this quote
“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love anymore. They don't teach you how to know what's happening in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”
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