Jostein Gaarder Quotes
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To wonder about life is not something we learn; it is something we forget.
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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.
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I am really more interested in questions than in giving answers.
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A sensation is always the same as a piece of news, and a piece of news never lives long.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Some are more equal than others.
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We can't own each other's past. The questioin is whether we have a future together.
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How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living.
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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.
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For nature is good, an man is 'by nature' good; it is civilization which ruins him.
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The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.
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All beauty that surrounds us must one day perish.
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Wisest is she who knows she does not know.
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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.
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If just one of those people experiences life as a crazy adventure--and I mean that he, or she, experiences this every single day... Then he or she is a joker in a pack of cards.
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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?
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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.
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I have gone around observing your activities from the outside. Because of this I have also been able to see things to which you have been blind... Every morning you have gone to work, but you have never been fully awake. Of course, you have seen the sun and the moon, the stars in the sky, and everything that moves, but you haven't really seen it at all. It is different for the Joker, because he was put into this world with a flaw: He sees too clearly and too much.
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I want to understand more about the world while Im still here.
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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.
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Where both reason and experience fall short, there occurs a vacuum that can be filled by faith.
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Love, your own witch-daughter, Queen of the Mirror and the Highest Protector of Irony.