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For nature is good, an man is 'by nature' good it is civilization which ruins him

Jostein Gaarder

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Jostein Gaarder
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: August 8
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Oslo
Norway
Ruins
Civilization
Nature
Good
Men

More quotes by Jostein Gaarder

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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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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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I want to understand more about the world while Im still here.
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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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To wonder about life is not something we learn it is something we forget.
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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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 was all too easy to make things up, it was like skating on thin ice, it was like doing dainty pirouettes on a brittle crust over water thousands of fathoms deep.
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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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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We are thrown together with a sprinkling of stardust.
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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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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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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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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But understanding will always require some effort. You probably wouldn't admire a friend who was good at everything if it cost her no effort.
Jostein Gaarder
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There is no order of things except in the human mind.
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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You might say that the very best that can happen is to have energetic opponents.
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