Jostein Gaarder - Sophie's World (1991)

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

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

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

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

Jostein Gaarder
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.

Jostein Gaarder
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.

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

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

Jostein Gaarder
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'.

Jostein Gaarder
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.

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

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

Jostein Gaarder
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.

Jostein Gaarder
A hydrogen atom in a cell at the end of my nose was once part of an elephant's trunk. A carbon atom in my cardiac muscle was once in the tail of a dinosaur.

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

Jostein Gaarder