Quote

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

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Jostein Gaarder
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 8
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Oslo
Norway
Come
Distinguish
Need
Followed
Needs
Rules
Never
Promise
Understood
Perhaps
Actually
True

More quotes by Jostein Gaarder

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I am really more interested in questions than in giving answers.
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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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The stupidest thing she knew was for people to act like they knew all about the things they knew absolutely nothing about.
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There are five billion people living on this planet. But you fall in love with one particular person, and you won't swap her for any other.
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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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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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Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others.
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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.
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Yes, we too are stardust.
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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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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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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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We are thrown together with a sprinkling of stardust.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
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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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We can't own each other's past. The questioin is whether we have a future together.
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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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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I think about my editor when I write. She's a good friend, too.
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Where both reason and experience fall short, there occurs a vacuum that can be filled by faith.
Jostein Gaarder