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The stupidest thing she knew was for people to act like they knew all about the things they knew absolutely nothing about.

Jostein Gaarder

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Jostein Gaarder
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 8
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Oslo
Norway
Absolutely
Knew
Nothing
Thing
Things
Like
People
Stupidest

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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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Maybe we can comprehend a flower or an insect, but we can never comprehend ourselves. Even less can we expect to comprehend the universe.
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All beauty that surrounds us must one day perish.
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...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.
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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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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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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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People are, generally speaking, either dead certain or totally indifferent.
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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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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.
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Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales
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Let me put it more precisely: The ability to give birth is a natural characteristic. In the same way, everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason.
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Yes, we too are stardust.
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The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.
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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.
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That fact that Athens could condemn its noblest citizen to death did more than make a profound impression on him. It was to shape the course of his entire philosophic endeavor.
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I want to understand more about the world while Im still here.
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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.
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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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The question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a persons needs.
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