Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

"People are, generally speaking, either dead certain or totally indifferent."
37 Quotes
"People are, generally speaking, either dead certain or totally indifferent."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"It's not a silly question if you can't answer it."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"Everything you know gained from experience"
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"We don't learn anything there [school]. The difference between schoolteachers and philosophers us that school-teachers think they know a lot of stuff that they try to force down our throats. Philosophers try to figure things out together with the pupils"
Jostein Gaarder, 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, Sophie's World
"Even though God could create all kinds of things, he could hardly create himself before he had a "self" to create with. So there was only one possibility left: God had always existed. But she had already rejected that possibility! Everything that existed had to have a beginning."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"Since the Renaissance, people have had to get used to living their life on a random planet in the vast galaxy."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"If an overgrown child draws something on a piece of paper, you can't ask the paper what the drawing is supposed to represent."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"The faculty of vision can vary from person to person. On the other hand, we can rely on what our reason tells us because that is the same for everyone"
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"We can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions. Outer circumstances can constrain us. Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings. But we are just as much determined by inner potential and outer opportunities as the Stone Age boy on the Rhine, the lion in Africa, or the apple tree in the garden."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"All a man can see while looking at the sky are cosmic fossils of thousands and millions of years ago. The only thing an astrologer can predict, is the past."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"Thus the 'fortune-teller' is trying to foresee something that is really quite unforeseeable. This is characteristic of all forms of foreseeing. And precisely because what they 'see' is so vague, it is hard to repudiate fortune-tellers' claims."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"Was Jesus a christian?"
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"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."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"But if the history of mankind was her own history, in a way she was thousands of years old."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"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."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"The rearing of children is considered too important to be left to the individual and should be the responsibility of the state."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"A state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"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."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
"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."
Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
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