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The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.
Jostein Gaarder
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Jostein Gaarder
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 8
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
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Oslo
Norway
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Philosopher
Wonder
Thing
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More quotes by Jostein Gaarder
For nature is good, an man is 'by nature' good it is civilization which ruins him
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If I’d chosen never to the foot inside the great fairytale, I’d never have known what I’ve lost. Do you see what I’m getting at? Sometimes it’s worse for us human beings to lose something dear to us than never to have had it at all.
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The most subversive people are those who ask questions.
Jostein Gaarder
Ladies and Gentlemen...we are floating in Space!
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I want to understand more about the world while Im still here.
Jostein Gaarder
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.
Jostein Gaarder
As long as we are children, we have the ability to experience things around us--but then we grow used to the world. To grow up is to get drunk on sensory experience.
Jostein Gaarder
I am really more interested in questions than in giving answers.
Jostein Gaarder
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
A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.
Jostein Gaarder
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
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.
Jostein Gaarder
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
Perhaps the clock hands had become so tired of going in the same direction year after year that they had suddenly begun to go the opposite way instead.
Jostein Gaarder
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
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.
Jostein Gaarder
Then you have a big problem, because a human is a thinking animal. If you don't think, you're not really a human.
Jostein Gaarder
We can't own each other's past. The questioin is whether we have a future together.
Jostein Gaarder
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
And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task.
Jostein Gaarder