Jostein Gaarder Quotes

I sat thinking how terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as incredible as living. One day we suddenly take the fact that we exist for granted - and then, yes, then we don’t think about it anymore until we are about to leave the world again.

Jostein Gaarder

• World
• Exist
• Don't Think

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Quotes to Explore

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

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Way
  • Sky

• 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
  • Understanding
  • Realize
  • Right Path

• It takes billions of years to create a human being. And it takes only a few seconds to die.

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Die
  • Create
  • Human being

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

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Nothing
  • Nature's Blocks

• 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.

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • True
  • Need
  • Fairytales

• Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales.

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Philosophy
  • Opposite
  • Fairytales

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

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Children
  • Responsibility
  • State

• 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
  • Atom
  • Trunk
  • Dinosaur

• 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
  • Universe
  • Planet
  • Lipstick

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

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Adventure
  • Extraordinary
  • Wandering

• We are the living planet!

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Living Planet

• Dear Hilde, if the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we would still be so stupid that we couldn't understand it. Love, Dad.

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Love
  • Stupid
  • Human Brain

• I wrote Sophies World in three months, but I was only writing and sleeping. I work for 14 hours a day when Im working on a book.

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Sleeping

• 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
  • Philosopher
  • Established
  • Investigate

• You can never know if a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. It’s something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don't think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first kiss.

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Believe
  • Important
  • Hope

• The most subversive people are those who ask questions.

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • People
  • Questions

• A Russian cosmonaut and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing Christianity. The brain surgeon was a Christian, but the cosmonaut wasn’t. ‘I have been in outer space many times,’ bragged the cosmonaut, ‘but I have never seen any angels.’ The brain surgeon stared in amazement, but then he said, ‘And I have operated on many intelligent brains, but I have never seen a single thought.

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Christianity
  • Angels
  • Brains

• 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
  • Murderers
  • Nazis
  • Convicted

• To prove religious faith by human reason is rationalistic claptrap.

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Faith
  • Prove
  • Human Reason

• 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
  • Circumstances
  • Development
  • Opportunities

• 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.

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Chance
  • Impossible
  • Exists

• Athens is like a sluggish horse, and I am the gadfly trying to sting it into life.

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Life
  • Athens
  • Sting

• Life is short for those who are truly able to understand that one day the entire world will come to a complete end. Not everyone is capable of that. Not everyone has the ability to comprehend what going away for all eternity really implies. There are too many distractions, hour by hour, minute by minute, to hinder such an understanding.

  

  Jostein Gaarder
  • Eternity
  • Life Is Short
  • Distractions

• 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
  • Destiny
  • Visitors
  • Entrance