“Wisest is she who knows she does not know.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“It's not a silly question if you can't answer it.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“A state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“You can never know if a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. It’s something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don't think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first kiss.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“Superstitious." What a strange word. If you believed in Christianity or Islam, it was called "faith". But if you believed in astrology or Friday the thirteenth it was superstition! Who had the right to call other people's belief superstition?”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“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, quote from Sophie's World
“So now you must choose... Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so? To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course. This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. To him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable - bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder…”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“The most subversive people are those who ask questions.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“Wasn’t it extraordinary to be in the world right now, wandering around in a wonderful adventure!”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of the unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig--or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the greatest mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“The question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a persons needs.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“... the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder...”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“ان الحيوانات تولد حيوانات ... اما الانسان فلا تلده انسانا, بل تربيه ليصيح كذلك”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“The stupidest thing she knew was for people to act like they knew all about the things they knew absolutely nothing about.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“Where both reason and experience fall short, there occurs a vacuum that can be filled by faith.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“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, quote from Sophie's World
“الأكثر ذكاء هو الذي يعرف أنه لا يعرف”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“Maybe we can comprehend a flower or an insect, but we can never comprehend ourselves. Even less can we expect to comprehend the universe.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“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.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“Imagine that one day you are out for a walk in the woods. Suddenly you see a small spaceship on the path in front of you. A tiny Martian climbs out the spaceship and stands on the ground looking up at you…
What would you think? Never mind, it’s not important. But have you ever given any thought to the fact that you are a Martian yourself?
It is obviously unlikely that you will ever stumble upon a creature from another planet. We do not even know that there is life on other planets. But you might stumble upon yourself one day. You might suddenly stop short and see yourself in a completely new light. On just such a walk in the woods.
I am an extraordinary being, you think. I am a mysterious creature.
You feel as if you are waking from an enchanted slumber. Who am I? you ask. You know that you are stumbling around on a planet in the universe. But what is the universe?
If you discover yourself in this manner you will have discovered something as mysterious as the Martian we just mentioned. You will not only have seen a being from outer space. You will feel deep down that you are yourself an extraordinary being.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“People are, generally speaking, either dead certain or totally indifferent.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“إن الميزة الوحيدة اللازمة لكي يصبح الإنسان فيلسوفاً جيداً هي قدرته على الدهشة”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“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, quote from Sophie's World
“من المستحيل أن يكون الإنسان سعيداً إذا تصرف على عكس قناعاته”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“إن الحياه محبطه و مأساويه, تتركنا ندخل عالماً رائعاً, نتلاقى, نتتعارف, نقطع معاً جزءا من الطريق, ثم نتوه عن بعضنا البعض, و نختفي بالسرعه ذاتها التي جئنا بها في المره الأولى”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“من المستحيل أن نشعر أننا احياء إذا لم نفكر أيضا بأننا سنموت, كما أننا لا نستطيع التفكير بموتنا دون أن نحس و في اللحظه نفسها بالمعجزه الغريبه معجزة كوننا أحياء.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
“Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to 'give birth' to correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. . . . Everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from Sophie's World
Jostein Gaarder
Born place: in Oslo, Norway
Born date August 8, 1952
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“He was in that familiar state - not that the occasion mattered to seriously to him -- of incoherent ideas spreading outward without a center, so characteristic of the present, and whose strange arithmetic adds up to a random proliferation of numbers without forming a unit.”
― Robert Musil, quote from The Man Without Qualities: Vol. 1
“That a feeling is bestowed on us by Nature, does not necessarily legitimate all its promptings. The feeling of justice might be a peculiar instinct, and might yet require, like our other instincts, to be controlled and enlightened by a higher reason. If we have intellectual instincts, leading us to judge in a particular way, as well as animal instincts that prompt us to act in a particular way, there is no necessity that the former should be more infallible in their sphere than the latter in theirs: it may as well happen that wrong judgments are occasionally suggested by those, as wrong actions by these. But though it is one thing to believe that we have natural feelings of justice, and another to acknowledge them as an ultimate criterion of conduct, these two opinions are very closely connected in point of fact. Mankind are always predisposed to believe that any subjective feeling, not otherwise accounted for, is a revelation of some objective reality.”
― John Stuart Mill, quote from Utilitarianism
“Say you're bored. Or you can't sleep. Maybe your mom is yelling at you, or the boy/ girl you like doesn't like you back in the same way, or you're too fat to even consider going to prom. Or the closet person to you since you were babies in the cradle together has killed herself. The usual stuff. Dread not. Don't be depressed. Be a junkie!
You can't count on people to nurture you through the trauma that is existence. But you already knew that.
Start by drawing the shades in your bedroom. Welcome the darkness. Lift the pill from your nightstand, clutch the water glass in your hand. Offer your divine thanks in advance. Be greedy-swallow the pill whole rather than spit it in half to spread the wealth for a later date. Dilution is wasteful. Savor the wholesome wholeness.
Now lay down in bed. Close your eyes.
Wait.
Just a little longer.”
― Rachel Cohn, quote from You Know Where to Find Me
“Don’t feel totally, personally, irrevocably responsible for everything. That’s my job. Signed, God.”
― Jan Karon, quote from A New Song
“Are you all right, Sir?”
Yes, I'm fine. My life is totally ruined but I'm fine. I feel free, detached from everything.”
“Then you're an outsider to life.”
― Tionne Rogers, quote from The Substitute
All the King's Men
2001: A Space Odysse...
Peace Like a River
The Last Unicorn
Julius Caesar
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