Jostein Gaarder Quotes

One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.

All thought is naught but a footnote to Plato.

There is no philosophy which is not founded upon knowledge of the phenomena, but to get any profit from this knowledge it is absolutely necessary to be a mathematician.

I read Plato's 'Republic.' I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing.

But in philosophy, sometimes the baby ought to go out with the bath water.

Plato's Symposium shows that flirtation and philosophy can further one another.

Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato,--at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories.

I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.

To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.

There is a truth in Schopenhauer’s view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. ... In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say ‘Let’s get a rough idea’, for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads.

An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.

In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not.

Philosophy is life's dry-nurse, who can take care of us - but not suckle us.

I read constantly because there is so much to learn from the writing in the world.

Socrates affirmed that only that which the reader already knows can be sparked by a reading, and that the knowledge cannot be acquired through dead letters.

The moment philosophy supposes it can find a final and comprehensive solution, it ceases to be inquiry and becomes either apologetics or propaganda.

Every philosophical review ought to be a philosophy of reviews at the same time.

Philosophy still moves too much straight ahead, and is not yet cyclical enough.

Godshawk looked surprised, the way that people generally do when you ask them philosophical questions in shrubberies in the middle of the night.

Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop; truths infinite and in harmony with infinity, in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest.

In philosophy, the principles are more interesting than the examples. In literature, the examples are more interesting than the principles.

There is no place in the world, I imagine, for a philosopher with a sense of humor, a new leisure, and an inquiring turn of mind!

And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano!