By Søren Kierkegaard
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
— Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety (1844).
Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility.