334 Quotes by Jostein Gaarder

This unshakable faith in human reason is called rationalism. A rationalist is someone who believes that human reason is the primary source of our knowledge of the world.

He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth. – GOETHE.

It’s not a silly question if you can’t answer it.

Long before the child learns to talk properly... the world will have become a habit. A pity, if you ask me.

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.

Life is both sad and solemn. We are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other – and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.

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.

Sophie saw that the philosopher was right. Grownups took the world for granted. They had let themselves be lulled into the enchanted sleep of their humdrum existence once and for all. ‘You’ve just grown so used to the world that nothing surprises you any more.

Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales.