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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

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Jostein Gaarder
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 8
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Oslo
Norway
History
Quests
Means
Quest
Certain
Plato
May
Advance
Mean
Philosophical
World
Increase
Reading
Knowledge
Aristotle

More quotes by Jostein Gaarder

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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.
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Wisest is she who knows she does not know.
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To wonder about life is not something we learn it is something we forget.
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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.
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All beauty that surrounds us must one day perish.
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But understanding will always require some effort. You probably wouldn't admire a friend who was good at everything if it cost her no effort.
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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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According to Kierkegaard, rather than searching for the Truth with a capital T, it is more important to find the kind of truths that are meaningful to the individual's life. It is important to find `the truth for me`.
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People are, generally speaking, either dead certain or totally indifferent.
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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.
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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.
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Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales
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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.
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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.
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A state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm.
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Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others.
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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
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I am really more interested in questions than in giving answers.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
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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