Jostein Gaarder Quotes

But it's important to be happy about the little you have. However little it is, it's infinitely more than nothing.

A Russian astronaut and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing religion. The brain surgeon was a Christian but the astronaut was not. The astronaut said, 'I've been out in space many times but I've never seen God or angels.' And the brain surgeon said, 'And I've operated on many clever brains but I've never seen a single thought.

Perhaps the clock hands had become so tired of going in the same direction year after year that they had suddenly begun to go the opposite way instead ...

I am really more interested in questions than in giving answers.

Thor - the Batman or James Bond of the gods - has once again conquered the forces of evil.

The severance between us was surgical, and there was no anaesthetic..

No day is alike - I do many other things, and I'm very active in the environmental movement.

In the garden everything was wonderfully clear and still. The birds were chirping so energetically that Sophie could hardly keep from laughing. The morning dew twinkled in the grass like drops of crystal. Once again she was struck by the incredible wonder of the world.

Plato found mathematics very absorbing because mathematical states never change.

Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to 'give birth' to correct insight, since real understanding must come from within ... Everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason.

Plato's point is that we can never have true knowledge of anything that is in a constant state of change. We can only have opinions about things that belong to the world of the senses, tangible things. We can only have true knowledge if things that can be understood with our reason.

This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. to him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable - bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. You might say that throughout his life a philosopher remains as thin-skinned as a child.

But all fairytales have rules, and perhaps it's their rules that actually distinguish one fairytale from the other. These rules never need to be understood. They only need to be followed. If not, what they promise won't come true.

Our lives are part of a unique adventure ... Nevertheless, most of us think the world is 'normal' and are constantly hunting for something abnormal
like angels or Martians. But that is just because we don't realize the world is a mystery. As for myself, I felt completely different. I saw the world as an amazing dream. I was hunting for some kind of explanation of how everything fit together.

All beauty that surrounds us must one day perish.

There are many writing courses, there's plenty of demand for them. The shortage is having something to write about, and that can't be taught in schools. There is no course in finding something to write about.
Many beginners lacked something as fundamental as experience of life. It's a postmodern misconception that you can write first and live later. But many young people want to become writers because they want to live like writers. This is putting the cart before the horse. You must live first, and then decide if you have something to say afterwards. Life itself is a determining factor. Writing is the fruit of life. Life isn't the fruit of writing.

The word 'influenza' actually means a malign influence from the stars.

We don't learn anything there [school]. The difference between schoolteachers and philosophers us that school-teachers think they know a lot of stuff that they try to force down our throats. Philosophers try to figure things out together with the pupils

If you believed in Christianity or Islam it was called 'faith', but if you believed in astrology or friday the thirteenth it was Superstition!

The sophists were as a rule men who had traveled widely and seen different forms of government. Both conventions and local laws in the city-states could vary widely. This led the Sophists to raise the question of what was natural and what was socially induced. By doing this, they paved the way for social criticism in the city-state of Athens.

Travelling brings you further out to the world. Dreaming draws you further inside it. But maybe we can't travel in more than one direction at once.

How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living.

He could very likely have appealed for leniency. At least he could have saved his life by agreeing to leave Athens. But had he done this he would not have been Socrates. He valued his conscience
and the truth
higher than life.

I no longer feel the need to see and sense more than I've already experienced. I just want so desperately to hang on what I have.

As soon as she concentrated on being alive now, the thought of dying also came into her mind.

According to Spinoza, this tree is free. It has its full freedom to develop its inherent abilities. But if it is an apple tree it will not have the ability to bear pears or plums. The same applies to us humans. We can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions, for instance.

The expectation of one thing following another does not lie in the things themselves, but in our mind. And expectation is associated with habit.

The harder you try to forget something, the more you think about it unconsciously.

Sophie could remember situations when her mother or the teachers at school had tried to teach her something that she hadn't been receptive to. And whenever she had really learned something, it was when she had somehow contributed to it herself.

If I'd chosen never to the foot inside the great fairytale, I'd never have known what I've lost. Do you see what I'm getting at? Sometimes it's worse for us human beings to lose something dear to us than never to have had it at all.

I said that one of the most infectious things I know is laughter. But sorrow can also be contagious. Fear is different. It isn't as communicable as laughter or sadness, and a good thing too. Fear is almost entirely a lonely thing.

I am here only this once. And I shall never return.

As long as we are children, we have the ability to experience things around us
but then we grow used to the world. To grow up is to get drunk on sensory experience.

Hume emphasized that the expectation of one thing following another does not lie in the things themselves, but in our mind. And expectation, as we have seen, is associated with habit. Going back to the child again, it would not have stared in amazement if when one billiard ball struck the other, both had remained perfectly motionless. When we speak of the 'laws of nature' or of 'cause and effect,' we are actually speaking of what we expect, rather than what is 'reasonable.' The laws of nature are neither reasonable nor unreasonable, they simply are. The expectation that the white billiard ball will move when it is struck by the black billiard ball is therefore not innate. We are not born with a set of expectations as to what the world is like or how things in the world behave. The world is like it is, and it's something we get to know

The stupidest thing she knew was for people to act like they knew all about the things they knew absolutely nothing about.

The force of gravity makes your planet orbit the sun, and the force of gravity from the moon pulls at the sea and makes tides rise and fall. Don't you think there must also be a force that dragged you up from the oceans and gave you eyes for seeing and a brain for thinking?'
I didn't know what to say.
'I sometimes wonder if people who don't believe this are missing an important sense,' said Mika finally.

Imagine that one day you are out for a walk in the woods. Suddenly you see a small spaceship on the path in front of you. A tiny Martian climbs out the spaceship and stands on the ground looking up at you…
What would you think? Never mind, it's not important. But have you ever given any thought to the fact that you are a Martian yourself?
It is obviously unlikely that you will ever stumble upon a creature from another planet. We do not even know that there is life on other planets. But you might stumble upon yourself one day. You might suddenly stop short and see yourself in a completely new light. On just such a walk in the woods.
I am an extraordinary being, you think. I am a mysterious creature.
You feel as if you are waking from an enchanted slumber. Who am I? you ask. You know that you are stumbling around on a planet in the universe. But what is the universe?
If you discover yourself in this manner you will have discovered something as mysterious as the Martian we just mentioned. You will not only have seen a being from outer space. You will feel deep down that you are yourself an extraordinary being.

In the eyeball there is a clash between creation and reflection. The two-way globes of sight are magical revolving doors where the creative spirit meets itself in the created spirit. The eye that surveys the universe is the universe's own eye.

To Hegel, history was like a running river. Every tiny movement in the water at a given spot in the river is determined by the falls and eddies in the water higher upstream. But these movements are determined, too, by the rocks and bends in the river at the point where you are observing it.
the history of thought
or of reason
is like this river. The thoughts that are washed along with the current of past tradition, as well as the material conditions prevailing at the time, help to determine how you think. You can therefore never claim that any particular thought is correct for ever and ever. But the thought can be correct from where you stand

If a baker makes fifty absolutely identical cookies, he must be using the same pastry mold for all of them.

Life is both sad and solemn. We are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other - and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.

I never tried to ingratiate myself with great writers. When a great writer has nothing to say, he does something else, like chopping firewood. A great writer doesn't try to find something to write about, he only writes when he has to. I was no great writer. I've always had the need to unload my thoughts, and so had to live with a kind of mental incontinence, but I've never felt forced to write a novel. Nor, for that matter, have I ever chopped firewood.

If something was natural, she supposed, it was the same for everybody.

The devil finds work for idle hands.

But flying across the centuries would have been a hefty job even for a very ironic goose. Crossing the Swedish provinces is far easier

It is extraordinary to think about. We still speak of Socratic or Platonic philosophy, but actually being Plato or Socrates is quite another matter.

A composition - and every work of art is one - is created in a wondrous interplay between imagination and reason, or between mind and reflection. For there will always be an element of chance in the creative process.

Love, your own witch-daughter, Queen of the Mirror and the Highest Protector of Irony

Going only part of the way is not the same as going the wrong way

But she who wins the lot of life must also draw the lot of death, since the lot of life is death

For nature is good, an man is 'by nature' good; it is civilization which ruins him

A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat. ... We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because we are in it, we are part of it. Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference beween us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick.

Where both reason and experience fall short, there occurs a vacuum that can be filled by faith.

If there is a god, he is not only a wizard at leaving clues behind. More than anything, he's a master of concealment. And the world is not something that gives itself away. The heavens still keep their secrets. There is little gossip amongst the stars. But no one has forgotten the Big Bang yet. Since then, silence has reigned supreme, and every thing there is moving away. One can still come across a moon. Or a comet. Just don't expect friendly greetings. No visiting cards are printed in space.

It's not a silly question if you can't answer it.

A sensation is always the same as a piece of news, and a piece of news never lives long.

Maybe we can comprehend a flower or an insect, but we can never comprehend ourselves. Even less can we expect to comprehend the universe.

Long before the child learns to talk properly ... the world will have become a habit. A pity, if you ask me.

As you can imagine, the wandering Sophists created bitter wrangling in Athens by pointing out that there were no absolute norms for what was right or wrong.

There is no order of things except in the human mind.

Plotinus believed that the world is span between two polls. At one end is the divine light which he calls the One. Sometimes he calls it God. At the other end is absolute darkness, which receives none of the light from the One. But Plotinus' point is that this darkness actually has no existence. It simply is the absence of light - in other words, it 'is' not. All that exists is God, or the One, but in the same way that a beam of light grows progressively dimmer and is gradually extinguished, there is somewhere that the divine glow cannot reach.

There are five billion people living on this planet. But you fall in love with one particular person, and you won't swap her for any other.

Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone off course because of a physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a 'sound mind in a sound body'.

We don't knoe when we're going to make our exits. But one day we'll pass away from this carnival with all its masks and roles, and only a few transient props will remain after us, until they too are swept away. We will step outside time, leave what we call 'reality'.

At School she had trouble concentrating on what the teacher said. They seemed to talk only about unimportant things. Why couldn't they talk about what a human being is - or about what the world is and how it came into being?

I've nothing against eye make-up and lipstick. But the fact is that we're actually living on a planet in space. For me that's an extraordinary thought. It's mind-boggling just to think about the existence of space at all. But there are girls who can't see the universe for eye liner.

The question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a persons needs.

What does it take to live a good life? The philosopher had written something about this quite early on in the course. Everybody needs food, warmth, love, and care. Such basics

But it is possible that a completely different author is somewhere writing a book about a UN Major Albert Knag, who is writing a book for his daughter Hilde. This book is about a certain Alberto Knox who suddenly begins to send humble philosophical lectures to Sophie Amundsen, 3 Clover Close.

I wrote 'Sophie's World' in three months, but I was only writing and sleeping. I work for 14 hours a day when I'm working on a book.

Is it true that sometimes you're so suspicious, you turn quite black inside?

But the dream of something unlikely has its own special name. We call it hope.

In the year 399 B.C.[E.] he was accused of "introducing new gods and corrupting the youth," as well as not believing in the accepted gods. With a slender majority, a jury of five hundred found him guilty.

I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of the unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig
or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the greatest mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery.

Not everybody can let himself drift along the flow of history. Some of us have to stop to pick up what's washed up on the banks of the river.

Kant's philosophy states that it is inherent in us. He agreed with Hume that we cannot know with certainty what the world is like "in itself." We can only know the what the world is like "for me" of for everybody.

The faculty of vision can vary from person to person. On the other hand, we can rely on what our reason tells us because that is the same for everyone

Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings.

As material beings we belong wholly to the natural world. We are therefore subject to causal relations. As such, we have no free will. But as rational beings we have a part in what Kant calls das Ding an sich -- that is, the world as it exists in itself, independent of our sensory impressions. Only when we follow our 'practical reason' -- which enables us to make moral choices -- do we exercise our free will, because when we conform to moral law, it is we who make the law we are conforming to.

And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task.

She felt that it was only her body that was getting old. Inside she had always been the same young girl.

If our brain was simple enough for us to understand it, we would be so stupid we wouldn't be able to understand it after all.

When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way to ourselves.

We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.

To prove religious faith by human reason is rationalistic claptrap.

At this very moment we are experiencing the consequences of man-made climate change. They are dramatic. However, opinion polls indicate that the people of this world are not particularly concerned. One

THE ONLY THING WE REQUIRE TO BE GOOD PHILOSOPHERS IS THE FACULTY OF WONDER. Babies

It was all too easy to make things up, it was like skating on thin ice, it was like doing dainty pirouettes on a brittle crust over water thousands of fathoms deep.

Yes, we too are stardust.

As Hume expressed it. The mind is 'a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, slide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.' Hume pointed out that we have no underlying 'personal identity' beneath or behind these perceptions and feelings which come and go. It is just like the images on a movie screen. They change so rapidly we do not register that the film is made up of single pictures. In reality the pictures are not connected. The film is a collection of instants

According to Kierkegaard, rather than searching for the Truth with a capital T, it is more important to find the kind of truths that are meaningful to the individual's life. It is important to find `the truth for me`.

The Cynics emphasized that true happiness is not found in external advantages such as material luxury, political power, or good health. True happiness lies in not being dependent on such random and fleeting things. And because happiness does not consist in benefits of this kind, it is within everyone's reach. moreover, having once been attained, it can never be lost.

Hegel said that `truth` is subjective, thus rejecting the existence of any `truth` above or beyond human reason. All knowledge is human knowledge.

Empedocles believed that there were two different forces at work in nature. He called them love and strife. Love binds things together, and strife separates them.

Is there such a thing as natural modesty?
Wisest is she who knows she does not know ...
True insight comes from within.
He who knows what is right will do right.

The more self-evident a thing is to one's reason, the more certain it is that it exists

The universe is a great mystery.

Once upon a time, thirty thousand years ago, there lived a little boy in the Rhine valley. He was a tiny part of nature, a tiny ripple on an endless sea. You too. Sophie, you too are living a tiny part of nature's life. There is no difference between you and that boy.'
'Except that I'm alive now.'
'Yes, but that is precisely what I wanted you to try and imagine. Who will you be in thirty thousand years?

It was a beautiful thought that all living things were imperfect copies of the eternal forms in the world of ideas.

If an overgrown child draws something on a piece of paper, you can't ask the paper what the drawing is supposed to represent.