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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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Jostein Gaarder
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 8
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Oslo
Norway
Whether
Future
Past
Together

More quotes by Jostein Gaarder

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There is no order of things except in the human mind.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder
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Life is like a huge lottery in which only the winning tickets are visible.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder
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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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Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales
Jostein Gaarder
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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
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When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way to ourselves.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder
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According to Kierkegaard, rather than searching for the Truth with a capital T, it is more important to find the kind of truths that are meaningful to the individual's life. It is important to find `the truth for me`.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
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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Hegel said that `truth` is subjective, thus rejecting the existence of any `truth` above or beyond human reason. All knowledge is human knowledge.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder