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Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others.

Jostein Gaarder

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Jostein Gaarder
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 8
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Oslo
Norway
Acting
Feelings
Others
Reason
Matter
Responsibly
Deepening
Strengthening
Welfare

More quotes by Jostein Gaarder

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If an overgrown child draws something on a piece of paper, you can't ask the paper what the drawing is supposed to represent.
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All beauty that surrounds us must one day perish.
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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.
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Then you have a big problem, because a human is a thinking animal. If you don't think, you're not really a human.
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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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When you realize there is something you don't understand, then you're generally on the right path to understanding all kinds of things.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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going only part of the way is not the same as going the wrong way
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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.
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The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
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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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Athens is like a sluggish horse, and I am the gadfly trying to sting it into life.
Jostein Gaarder
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Yes, we too are stardust.
Jostein Gaarder
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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
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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
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Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales
Jostein Gaarder