Best 140 quotes of Jostein Gaarder on MyQuotes

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

Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of them fall off, but others cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink. 'Ladies and Gentlemen,' they yell, 'we are floating in space!' But none of the people down there care.

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.

Over the entrance to the temple at Delphi was a famous inscription: KNOW THYSELF! It reminded visitors that man must never believe himself to be more than mortal - and that no man can escape his destiny.

People are, generally speaking, either dead certain or totally indifferent.

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.

Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales

Since the Renaissance, people have had to get used to living their life on a random planet in the vast galaxy.

Socrates himself said, 'One thing only I know, and this is that I know nothing.' Remember this statement, because it is an admission that is rare, even among philosophers. Moreover, it can be so dangerous to say in public that it can cost you your life. The most subversive people are those who ask questions. Giving answers is not nearly as threatening. Any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers.

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.

Superstitious." What a strange word. If you believed in Christianity or Islam, it was called "faith". But if you believed in astrology or Friday the thirteenth it was superstition! Who had the right to call other people's belief superstition?

That fact that Athens could condemn its noblest citizen to death did more than make a profound impression on him. It was to shape the course of his entire philosophic endeavor.

Then you have a big problem, because a human is a thinking animal. If you don't think, you're not really a human.

The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.

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.

There exists a world. In terms of probability this borders on the impossible. It would have been far more likely if, by chance, there was nothing at all. Then, at least, no one would have began asking why there was nothing.

There is always Joker to see through the delusion. Generation succeeds generation, but there is a fool walking the earth who is never ravaged by time.

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.

The soul yearns to fly home on the wings of love to the world of ideas. It longs to be freed from the chains of the body.

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

The truth is that I feel totally helpless, or totally inconsolable, to be more honest. I’m not trying to hide it, but it’s something you’re not to worry about.

the very best that can happen is to have energetic opponents. The more extreme they become, the more powerful the reaction they will have to face.

Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live.

To prove religious faith by human reason is rationalistic claptrap.

To wonder about life is not something we learn; it is something we forget.

Wasn’t it extraordinary to be in the world right now, wandering around in a wonderful adventure!

We are the living planet!

We can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions. Outer circumstances can constrain us. Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings. But we are just as much determined by inner potential and outer opportunities as the Stone Age boy on the Rhine, the lion in Africa, or the apple tree in the garden.

We can't own each other's past. The questioin is whether we have a future together.

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.

What Plato was really asking was perhaps why a horse was a horse, and not, for example, a cross between a horse and a pig.

When we die, as when the scenes have been fixed on to celluloid and the scenery is pulled down and burnt — we are phantoms in the memories of our descendants. Then we are ghosts, my dear, then we are myths. But still we are together. We are the past together, we are a distant past. Beneath the dome of the mysterious stars, I still hear your voice.

When we gaze at a star in the Milky Way which is 50,000 light-years away from our sun, we are looking back 50,000 years in time." "The idea is much too big for my little head." "The only way we can look out into space, then, is to look back in time. We can never know what the universe is like now. We only know what it was like then. When we look up at a star that is thousands of light-years away, we are really traveling thousands of years back in the history of space.

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

When we sense something, it is due to the movement of atoms in space. When I see the moon it is because "moon atoms" penetrate my eye.

When we talked about Socrates, we saw how dangerous it could be to appeal to people's reason. With Jesus we see how dangerous it can be to demand unconditional forgiveness. Even in the world of today, we can see how mighty powers can come apart at the seams when confronted with simple demands for peace, love, food for the poor, and amnesty for the enemies of the state.

When you realize there is something you don't understand, then you're generally on the right path to understanding all kinds of things.

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

Where did the world come from? The question has an answer, even though I cannot get to it. It is a good question. It is like a crime that has not been solved. There is an answer, even if police do not know it.

Wisest is she who knows she does not know.

You might say that the very best that can happen is to have energetic opponents.

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.

All a man can see while looking at the sky are cosmic fossils of thousands and millions of years ago. The only thing an astrologer can predict, is the past.

Although I've always been easily led by my imagination, I was, and I remain, a rational person.

Athènes devint à partir de 450 avant Jésus-Christ la capitale culturelle du monde grec. La philosophie aussi prit un nouveau tournant. Les philosophes de la nature étaient avant tout des hommes de science qui s'intéressaient à l'analyse physique du monde et, à ce titre, ils tiennent une place importante dans l'histoire de la science. Mais, à Athènes, l'étude de la nature fut supplantée par celle de l'homme et sa place dans la société. Petit à petit, une démocratie avec des assemblées du peuple et des juges populaires vit le jour. Une condition sine qua non pour l'établissement de la démocratie était que le peuple fût assez éclairé pour pouvoir participer au processus démocratique. Qu'une jeune démocratie exige une certaine éducation du peuple, nous l'avons bien vu de nos jours.

A true philosopher must never give up.

But humanism has always had a shadow side. No epoch is either purely good or purely evil. Good and evil are twin threads that run through the history of mankind. And often they intertwine.

But if the history of mankind was her own history, in a way she was thousands of years old.

But if two people do almost nothing except search for one another, it's hardly surprising if they run across each other by chance.

But most people are content with a life among shadows. They give no thought to what is casting the shadows. They think shadows are all there are, never realizing even that they are, in fact, shadows. And thus they pay no heed to the immortality of their own soul.