Jostein Gaarder Quotes

67 Sourced Quotes

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.

Jostein Gaarder
A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little.

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

Jostein Gaarder
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.

Jostein Gaarder
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.

Jostein Gaarder
Moreover, nature's blocks had to be eternal-because nothing can come from nothing.

Jostein Gaarder
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.

Jostein Gaarder
Long before the child learns to talk properly-and long before it learns to think philosophically-the world will have become a habit. A pity, if you ask me.

Jostein Gaarder
As a Roman philosopher, Cicero, said of him a few hundred years later, Socrates 'called philosophy down from the sky and established her in the towns and introduced her into homes and forced her to investigate life, ethics, good and evil.

Jostein Gaarder
Everything we see in the sky is a cosmic fossil from thousands and millions of years ago.

Jostein Gaarder
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.

Jostein Gaarder
The Idea is much too big for my little head.

Jostein Gaarder
Life is like a huge lottery in which only the winning tickets are visible.

Jostein Gaarder
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.

Jostein Gaarder
A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.

Jostein Gaarder
The rearing of children is considered too important to be left to the individual and should be the responsibility of the state.

Jostein Gaarder
Every single morning I wake with a bang,' he said. 'It's as though the fact that I am alive is injected into me; I am a character in a fairytale, bursting with life.

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

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

Jostein Gaarder
Many of the Nazis were convicted after the war, but they were not convicted for being 'unreasonable'. They were convicted for being gruesome murderers.

Jostein Gaarder
It is by no means certain that we advance our philosophical quest by reading Plato or Aristotle. It may increase our knowledge of history but not of the world.

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

Jostein Gaarder
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.

Jostein Gaarder
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.

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

Jostein Gaarder
But she'd managed to find her way into our reality, perhaps because she had an important mission here, perhaps because she was here to save us from what people call the monotony of life.

Jostein Gaarder
A state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm.

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

Jostein Gaarder
It is different for us mortals. We are the ones who become old and grey. We are the ones who become worn at the seams and disappear. But not our dreams. They can live on in other people even after we have gone.

Jostein Gaarder
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...

Jostein Gaarder