Jostein Gaarder

“Everything you know gained from experience”

“- - Kohottaessamme katseemme taivaalle koetamme jotenkin löytää tien takaisin itseemme.”

“The perspectives are so labyrinthine that several possibilities must be kept open. If there is a Creator, what is he? And if there isn’t a Creator, what is this world?”

“If there is a god, he is not only a wizard at leaving clues behind. More than anything, he's a master of concealment. And the world is not something that gives itself away. The heavens still keep their secrets. There is little gossip amongst the stars. But no one has forgotten the Big Bang yet. Since then, silence has reigned supreme, and every thing there is moving away. One can still come across a moon. Or a comet. Just don't expect friendly greetings. No visiting cards are printed in space.”

“It's not him who's disturbed. But he likes to disturb others--to shake them out of their rut.”

“Socrates himself said, 'One thing only I know, and this is that I know nothing.' Remember this statement, because it is an admission that is rare, even among philosophers. Moreover, it can be so dangerous to say in public that it can cost you your life. The most subversive people are those who ask questions. Giving answers is not nearly as threatening. Any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers.”

“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.”

“Man is the measure of all things', said the Sophist Protagora (c. 485-410 B.C.). By that he meant that the question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a person's needs.”

“Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone off course because of a physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a 'sound mind in a sound body'.”

“If you believed in Christianity or Islam it was called 'faith', but if you believed in astrology or friday the thirteenth it was Superstition!”

“When we sense something, it is due to the movement of atoms in space. When I see the moon it is because "moon atoms" penetrate my eye.”

“A hydrogen atom in a cell at the end of my nose was once part of an elephant's trunk. A carbon atom in my cardiac muscle was once in the tail of a dinosaur.”

“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.”

“Nevertheless we are free individuals, and this freedom condemns us to make choices throughout our lives. There are no eternal values or norms we can adhere to, which makes our choices even more significant. Because we are totally responsible for everything we do. Sartre emphasized that man must never disclaim the responsibility for his actions. Nor can we avoid the responsibility of making our own choices on the grounds that we "must" go to work, or we "must" live up to certain middle-class expectations regarding how we should live. Those who thus slip into the anonymous masses will never be other than members of the impersonal flock, having fled from themselves into self-deception. On the other hand our freedom obliges us to make something of ourselves, to live "authentically" or "truly".”

“Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live.”

“The individual in modern urban society had become `the public`, he said [Kierkegaard], and the predominant characteristic of the crowd, or the masses, was all their noncommittal `talk`. Today we would probably use the word `conformity`; that is when everybody `thinks` and `believes in` the same things without having any deeper feeling about it.”

“Kierkegaard also said that truth is `subjective`. By this he did not mean it doesn't matter what we think or believe. He meant that the really important truths are personal. Only these truths are `true for me`.”

“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`.”

“The history of thought - or of reason - is like this river. The thoughts that are washed along with the current of past tradition, as well as the material conditions prevailing at the time, help to determine how you think. You can therefore never claim that any particular thought is correct for ever and ever. But the thought can be correct from where you stand.”

“The German poet Goethe once said that "he who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth." I don't want you to end up in such a sad state. I will do what I can to acquaint you with your historical roots. It is the only way to become a human being. It is the only way to become more than a naked ape. It is the only way to avoid floating in a vacuum.”

“Hegel said that `truth` is subjective, thus rejecting the existence of any `truth` above or beyond human reason. All knowledge is human knowledge.”

“Me dedicó una cálida sonrisa, y esa sonrisa, podría haber derretido el mundo entero, porque si el mundo entero la hubiera visto, ella habría tenido la fuerza suficiente para acabar con todas las guerras y toda la enemistad del planeta, o al menos habría dado lugar a una larga tregua.”

“A composition—and every work of art is one—is created in a wondrous interplay between imagination and reason, or between mind and reflection. For there will always be an element of chance in the creative process.”

“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.”

“We are thrown together with a sprinkling of stardust.”

“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.”

“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.”

“But Dad said we had to try, because neither he or I could bear the thought of living the rest of our lives without her.”

“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.”

“From the point of view of pure logic or philosophy, there will often be a dialectical tension between two concepts.For example...If I reflect on the concept of 'being,' I will be obliged to introduce the opposite concept, that of 'nothing.' You can't reflect on your existence without immediately realizing that you won't always exist. The tension between 'being' and 'nothing' becomes resolved in the concept of 'becoming.' Because if something is in the process of becoming, it both is and is not.”

“History is one long chain of reflections. Hegel also indicated certain rules that apply for this chain of reflections. Anyone studying history in depth will observe that a thought is usually proposed on the basis of other, previously proposed thoughts. But as soon as one thought is proposed, it will be contradicted by another. A tension arises between these two opposite ways of thinking. But the tension is resolved by the proposal of a third thought which accommodates the best of both points of view. Hegel calls this a dialectic process”

“Hegel claimed that the 'world spirit' is developing toward an ever-expanding knowledge of itself. It's the same with rivers--they become broader and broader as they get nearer to the sea. According to Hegel, history is the story of the 'world spirit' gradually coming to consciousness of itself. Although the world has always existed, human culture and human development have made the world spirit increasingly conscious of its intrinsic value.”

“to Hegel, history was like a running river. Every tiny movement in the water at a given spot in the river is determined by the falls and eddies in the water higher upstream. But these movements are determined, too, by the rocks and bends in the river at the point where you are observing it.the history of thought--or of reason--is like this river. The thoughts that are washed along with the current of past tradition, as well as the material conditions prevailing at the time, help to determine how you think. You can therefore never claim that any particular thought is correct for ever and ever. But the thought can be correct from where you stand”

“Hegel believed that the basis of human cognition changed from one generation to the next. There were therefore no 'eternal truths', no timeless reason. The only fixed point philosophy can hold on to is history itself.”

“Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales”

“when we wonder where the world came from--and then discuss possible answers--reason is in a sense 'on hold.' For it has no sensory material to process, no experience to make use of, because we have never experienced the whole of the great reality that we are a tiny part ofWe are--in a way--a tiny part of the ball that comes rolling across the floor. So we can't know where it came from.”

“Indeed, there is pain when spring buds burst..."Wasn't there a Swedish poet who had said something like that? Or was she Finnish?”

“What you did was to draw a conclusion from a descriptive sentence--That personwants to live too'--to what we call a normative sentence: 'Therefore you ought not to kill them.' From the point of view of reason this is nonsense. You might just as well say 'There are lots of people who cheat on their taxes, therefore I ought to cheat on my taxes too.' Hume said you can never draw conclusions from is sentences to ought sentences. Nevertheless it is exceedingly common, not least in newspaper articles, political party programs, and speeches.”

“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”

“Hume emphasized that the expectation of one thing following another does not lie in the things themselves, but in our mind. And expectation, as we have seen, is associated with habit. Going back to the child again, it would not have stared in amazement if when one billiard ball struck the other, both had remained perfectly motionless. When we speak of the 'laws of nature' or of 'cause and effect,' we are actually speaking of what we expect, rather than what is 'reasonable.' The laws of nature are neither reasonable nor unreasonable, they simply are. The expectation that the white billiard ball will move when it is struck by the black billiard ball is therefore not innate. We are not born with a set of expectations as to what the world is like or how things in the world behave. The world is like it is, and it's something we get to know”

“let's say you and a small child go to a magic show, where things are made to float in the air. Which of you would have the most fun?""I probably would.""And why would that be?""Because I would know how impossible it all is.""So... for the child it's no fun to see the laws of nature being defied before it has learned what they are.""I guess that's right.""And we are still at the crux of Hume's philosophy of experience. He would have added that the child has not yet become a slave of the expectations of habit; he is thus the more open-minded of you two. I wonder if the child is not also the greater philosopher? He comes utterly without preconceived opinions. And that, my dear Sophie, is the philosopher's most distinguishing virtue. The child perceives the world as it is, without putting more into things than he experiences”

“as Hume expressed it. The mind is 'a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, slide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.' Hume pointed out that we have no underlying 'personal identity' beneath or behind these perceptions and feelings which come and go. It is just like the images on a movie screen. They change so rapidly we do not register that the film is made up of single pictures. In reality the pictures are not connected. The film is a collection of instants”

“A Russian astronaut and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing religion. The brain surgeon was a Christian but the astronaut was not. The astronaut said, 'I've been out in space many times but I've never seen God or angels.' And the brain surgeon said, 'And I've operated on many clever brains but I've never seen a single thought.”

“Jeppe on the Mount"By Ludvig Holberg"Jeppe falls asleep in a ditch ... and wakes up in the Baron's bed. So he thinks he only dreamed that he was a poor farmhand. Then when he falls asleep again they carry him back to the ditch, and he wakes up again. This time he thinks he only dreamed he was lying in the Baron's bed.”

“going only part of the way is not the same as going the wrong way”

“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.”

“The truth is that I feel totally helpless, or totally inconsolable, to be more honest. I’m not trying to hide it, but it’s something you’re not to worry about.”

“But she’d managed to find her way into our reality, perhaps because she had an important mission here, perhaps because she was here to save us from what people call the monotony of life.”

“Za mene je ovaj svet uvek bio svet magije, od najmanjih nogu i mnogo pre nego sto sam na ulicama Osla poceo da pratim neku devojku sa pomorandzama. Idalje imam osecaj da sam video nesto sot niko drugi nije. Tesko je opisati to osecanje jednostavnim recima, ali zamisli ovaj svet pre sveg ovog modernog raspredanja o prirodnim zakonima, evolucionistickoj teoriji, atomima i molekulima DNK, biohemiji i nervnim celijama - da, pre nego sto je ova lopta pocela da se okrece, pre nego sto je svedena na "planetu" u svemiru i pre nego sto je ponosno ljudsko telo podeljeno na srce, pluca, bubrege, jetru, krvni sistem, misice, zeludac i creva. Pricam o onom vremenu kada je ljudsko bice blo ljudsko bice, tj. celovito i ponosno ljudsko bice, ni manje ni vise. Tada svet nije bio nista drugo do iskricava bajka.”

“Zasto je Pepeljuga morala da se vrati kuci sa bala pre ponoci? Ne mogu ni da pretpostavim, a veroavtno nije mogla ni Pepeljuga. Ali nije dopusteno raspitivati se o otme ako si vec dozvolio da te magija povuce. Jednostavno moras da prihvatis uslove makar bili i nerazumljivi.”