334 Quotes by Jostein Gaarder

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.

The Enlightenment philosophers thought that once reason and knowledge became widespread, humanity would make great progress. It could only be a question of time before irrationalism and ignorance would give way to an “enlightened” humanity... Today we no longer so convinced that all “developments” are to the good.

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.

Over the entrance to the temple at Delphi was a famous inscription: KNOW THYSELF! It reminded visitors that man must never believe himself to be more than mortal – and that no man can escape his destiny.

Democritus believed that the soul was made up of special round, smooth ‘soul atoms.’ When a human being died, the soul atoms flew in all directions, and could then become part of a new soul formation.

But when these basic needs have been satisfied – will there still be something that everybody needs? Philosophers think so. They believe that man cannot live by bread alone. Of course everyone needs food. And everyone needs love and care. But there is something else – apart from that – which everyone needs, and that is to figure out who we are and why we are here.

The memories float further and further away from that which once created them.

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.

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.