“Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.”

— Sören Kierkegaard

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die." by Sören Kierkegaard?

Sören Kierkegaard 309

Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism 1813–1855

Luiz Carlos Alborghetti (1945–2009) Italian-Brazilian radio commenter, showman and political figure

Original: (pt) Existem três coisas que você só faz uma vez na vida: nascer, morrer e votar no PT!

“Drive down any road,

take a train or an airplane
across the world, leave
your old life behind,

die and be born again~
wherever you arrive
they'll be there first,

glossy and rowdy
and indistinguishable.
The deep muscle of the world.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

“You may know you’re going to die, but you won’t know you’re dead.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

“We are the Roots of the tree on which you flourish. Go on rejoicing in your beauty! But remember there is this difference between us that with every autumn the old Leaves die, and with every spring new Leaves are born; but if the Roots once perish neither you nor the tree can live at all.”

Ivan Krylov (1769–1844) Russian writer

An argosy of fables, "The Leaves and the Roots" p. 398
The Fables (1883)

“Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

“If you’re born poor, you will die on average nine years earlier than others. If you’re black, you’re treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white. If you’re a white, working-class boy, you’re less likely than anybody else to go to university. If you’re at a state school, you’re less likely to reach the top professions than if you’re educated privately. If you’re a woman, you still earn less than a man. If you suffer from mental health problems, there’s too often not enough help to hand. If you’re young, you’ll find it harder than ever before to own your own home. These are all burning injustices, and – as I did with the misuse of stop and search and deaths in police custody and modern slavery – I am determined to fight against them.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech declaring bid for the Conservative Party leadership http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-mays-tory-leadership-launch-statement-full-text-a7111026.html (30 June 2016)

“So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Through A Glass, Darkly (1918)
Context: So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me. And I see not in my blindness
What the objects were I wrought,
But as God rules o'er our bickerings
It was through His will I fought. So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.

“Childhood is over when you know you’re gonna die.”

James O'Barr The Crow

Source: The Crow

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Loose translation, commonly attributed to Gramsci by Slavoj Žižek, presumably formulation by Žižek (see below).
Presumably a translation from a loose French translation by Gustave Massiah; strict English with cognate terms and glosses:
Le vieux monde se meurt, le nouveau monde tarde à apparaître et dans ce clair-obscur surgissent les monstres
The old world is dying, the new world tardy (slow) to appear and in this chiaroscuro (light-dark) surge (emerge) monsters.
“ Mongo Beti, une conscience noire, africaine, universelle http://www.liberationafrique.org/imprimersans.php3?id_article=16&nom_site=Lib%C3%A9ration”, Gustave Massiah, CEDETIM, août 2002 ( archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160304061734/http://www.liberationafrique.org/imprimersans.php3?id_article=16&nom_site=Lib%C3%A9ration, 2016-03-04)
“Mongo Beti, a Black, African, Universal Conscience”, Gustave Massiah, CEDETIM, August 2002
Collected in: Remember Mongo Beti, Ambroise Kom, 2003, p. 149 https://books.google.com/books?id=6YgdAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Le+vieux+monde+se+meurt,+le+nouveau+monde+tarde+%C3%A0+appara%C3%AEtre+et+dans+ce+clair-obscur+surgissent+les+monstres%22.
Original, with literal English translation (see above):
La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati.
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
Similar sentiments are widespread in revolutionary rhetoric; see: No, Žižek did not attribute a Goebbels quote to Gramsci http://thecharnelhouse.org/2015/07/03/no-zizek-did-not-attribute-a-goebbels-quote-to-gramsci/, Ross Wolfe, 2015-07-03
Misattributed
Source: Selections from the Prison Notebooks

“What were Jove himself
If pity had not been? Was not he once
A hapless babe, condemn'd to die ere born?”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

Sylphs
Poems (1851), Prometheus

“Once you are born in this world you’re old enough to die.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Sören Kierkegaard 309

Related quotes

Related topics