Jostein Gaarder Quotes

It is noticed, that the consideration of the great periods and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind, and an indifferenceto death.

Do not look at stars as bright spots only. Try to take in the vastness of the universe.

The lunar flights give you a correct perception of our existence. You look back at Earth from the moon, and you can put your thumb up to the window and hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything you've ever known is behind your thumb, and that blue-and-white ball is orbiting a rather normal star, tucked away on the outer edge of a galaxy.

The really wonderful thing that happened to me when I was in space was this feeling of belonging to the entire universe.

I recognise a distinction between dream life and real life, between appearances and actualities. I confess to an over-powering desire to know whether I am asleep or awake--whether the environment and laws which affect me are external and permanent, or the transitory products of my own brain.

Thinking should be like musical meditation. Has any philosopher pursued a thought to its limits the way Bach or Beethoven develop and exhaust a musical theme? Even after having read the most profound thinkers, one still feels the need to begin anew. Only music gives definitive answers.

Plato says a multitude can never philosophize and hence can never recognize the seriousness of philosophy or who really philosophizes. Attempting to influence the multitude results in forced prostitution.

Only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.

Wherever people feel safe — they will be indifferent.

What am I that I am called upon to have prejudices concerning the universe?

Sometimes people stumble over this vastness in relation to the apparent insignificance of man. It does seem to make us infinitesimally small. But the meaning of this magnitude is not mainly about us. It’s about God… The reason for ‘wasting’ so much space on a universe to house a speck of humanity is to make a point about our maker, not us.

Are we human because we gaze at the stars or do we gaze at the stars because we are human?

I wanted to write literature that pushed people into their lives rather than helping people escape from them.

Why do you climb philosophical hills? Because they are worth climbing . . . There are no hills to go down unless you start from the top.

If you want to say that the sky is black, and if I'm there, even if I fall back down again, I will be weightless for a period of time - maybe that's the definition of space.

I've been on the planet for 40 years now, and I'm still none the wiser as to what it's all about really. I've never worried about life's big questions. People at my age sit about pondering, 'Why are we here?' The only time I ever asked myself that is when Suzanne booked us a surprise holiday to Lanzarote.

I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.

People keep themselves at a tolerable height above an infernal abyss toward which they gravitate only by putting out all their strength and lovingly helping one another. They are tied together by ropes, and it's bad enough when the ropes around an individual loosen and he drops somewhat lower than the others into empty space; ghastly when the ropes break and he falls. That's why we should cling to the others.

The universe takes us as seriously as we take it.

We know this apodictic rock beneath our feet. That dogmatic sun above our heads. The world of dreams, the agony of love and the foresight of death. That is all we know. And all we need to know? Challenge that statement.

Immensity is always there, but we so often become numb to it, or deceive ourselves into thinking our own lives and selves are what's large. Step into the ocean or walk on Mount Tamalpais, and that kind of amnesia and self-centeredness isn't possible. Enter the natural world at all, you see existence emerge, ripen, fall and continue, and you can't help but feel more tender towards self and others. That summoning into the large and the shared is what poems exist also to do.

Being human means asking the questions of one's own being and living under the impact of the answers given to this question. And, conversely, being human means receiving answers to the questions of one's own being and asking questions under the impact of the answers.

Many people don't realise until they are on their deathbed and everything external falls away that no thing ever had anything to do with who they are.

You can reach a situation where things of intelligence and refinement and culture can be considered elite, and things that are crass and ignorant can be considered to be real and of the people. And when you begin to have the mass of populus striving for something that's not worth striving for, then tremendous amounts of energy go into...the maintenance of that which is worthless.