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Life is like a huge lottery in which only the winning tickets are visible.

Jostein Gaarder

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Jostein Gaarder
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 8
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Oslo
Norway
Like
Lottery
Tickets
Visible
Huge
Winning
Life

More quotes by Jostein Gaarder

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Where both reason and experience fall short, there occurs a vacuum that can be filled by faith.
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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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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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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Athens is like a sluggish horse, and I am the gadfly trying to sting it into life.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
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
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Where did the world come from? The question has an answer, even though I cannot get to it. It is a good question. It is like a crime that has not been solved. There is an answer, even if police do not know it.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder
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Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
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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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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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.
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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Many of the Nazis were convicted after the war, but they were not convicted for being 'unreasonable'. They were convicted for being gruesome murderers.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder
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The most subversive people are those who ask questions.
Jostein Gaarder
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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.
Jostein Gaarder