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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.
Jostein Gaarder
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Jostein Gaarder
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 8
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Oslo
Norway
Life
Saved
Conscience
Leniency
Higher
Agreeing
Leave
Appealed
Least
Athens
Truth
Socrates
Done
Valued
Would
Likely
More quotes by Jostein Gaarder
Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales
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I think about my editor when I write. She's a good friend, too.
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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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When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way to ourselves.
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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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There is no order of things except in the human mind.
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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.
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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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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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Although you may not stumble across a Martian in the garden, you might stumble across yourself. The day that happens, you'll probably also scream a little. And that'll be perfectly all right, because it's not every day you realize you're a living planet dweller on a little island in the universe.
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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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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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Athens is like a sluggish horse, and I am the gadfly trying to sting it into life.
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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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To wonder about life is not something we learn it is something we forget.
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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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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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Yes, we too are stardust.
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Many of the Nazis were convicted after the war, but they were not convicted for being 'unreasonable'. They were convicted for being gruesome murderers.
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