Jostein Gaarder
Jostein Gaarder
Jostein Gaarderis a Norwegian intellectual and author of several novels, short stories and children's books. Gaarder often writes from the perspective of children, exploring their sense of wonder about the world. He often utilizes metafiction in his works and constructs stories within stories. His best known work is the novel Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy. It has been translated into 60 languages; there are over 40 million copies in print...
NationalityNorwegian
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth8 August 1952
CountryNorway
Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others.
... the only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder...
To prove religious faith by human reason is rationalistic claptrap.
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.
Moreover, nature's blocks had to be eternal-because nothing can come from nothing.
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.
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`.
I think about my editor when I write. She's a good friend, too.
Life consists of a long chain of coincidences.
Where did the world come from? The question has an answer, even though I cannot get to it. It is a good question. It is like a crime that has not been solved. There is an answer, even if police do not know it.
To wonder about life is not something we learn; it is something we forget.
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.
...long before the child learns to talk properly-and long before it learns to think philosophically-the world will have become a habit. A pity, if you ask me.
I want to understand more about the world while Im still here.