To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.

This aphoristic line is widely attributed to the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), whose writings repeatedly return to the risks of choice, commitment, and becoming a self. Kierkegaard wrote in a Denmark marked by comfortable bourgeois Christianity and a strong cultural preference for social conformity—conditions he thought encouraged people to evade inward responsibility. Across works published under his own name and pseudonyms, he portrays authentic existence as requiring decisive “leaps” that cannot be secured by proof or public approval. The quote is commonly circulated in English as a compact summary of his existential emphasis on courage, anxiety, and selfhood, though it is often presented without a precise citation.

The saying contrasts two kinds of loss. To “dare” is to accept temporary instability: risk, uncertainty, and the anxiety that accompanies genuine freedom. That momentary loss of footing is the price of growth and of acting as a responsible individual rather than as a passive product of circumstance. To “not dare,” however, is a deeper forfeiture: the gradual surrender of one’s selfhood through avoidance, conformity, and refusal to choose. In Kierkegaardian terms, the self is not a fixed possession but a task—something achieved through committed decisions. The line therefore treats courage not as bravado but as the willingness to endure uncertainty in order to become oneself.