Jostein Gaarder Quotes

The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

Success, in a generally accepted sense of the term, means the opportunity to experience and to realize to the maximum the forces that are within us.

Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny.

You can do what you want to do. You can be what you want to be.

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.

In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.

In America, we can reinvent ourselves - we're encouraged to.

Atlanta has become and has always been a place where you create your own universe.

I believe the highest aspiration of man should be individual freedom and the development of the individual.

Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.

...Although, as the Latin verb to educate, educate, indicates, it is not a question of putting something in but drawing it out, if it is there to begin with...I want all of my students and all of my dancers to be aware of the poignancy of life at that moment. I would like to feel that I had, in some way, given them the gift of themselves.

Deep within the individual is a vast reservoir of untapped power awaiting to be used. no person can have the use of all this potential until he learns to know his or her own self. the trouble with many people is that they got through life thinking and writing themselves off as ordinary commonplace persons. having no proper belief in themselves they live aimless and erratic lives largely because they never realize what their lives really can be or what they can become

on first priority in design consideration is the full realization of individual potential in order to reach the second derivative full realization for all individuals

The purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best which is within us.

The purpose of education is to enable us to develop to the fullest that which is inside us

Education should bring to light the ideal of the individual.

Man is born as a seed; he can become a flower, he may not. It all depends on you, what you do with yourself; it all depends on you whether you grow or you don´t. It is your choice- and each moment the choice has to be faced; each moment you are on the crossroads.

Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process; he is not merely an extant life, but is, within that life, endowed with possibilities through the freedom he possesses to make of himself what he will by the activities on which he decides.

Possibly the greatest waste in life is the gap between what you are and what you could become.

It is right, or absolute right, that an individual should develop the powers that are in him. He may be said to have a "natural right" to become what he is capable of becoming. This is his only natural right.

God will help you be all you can be, but he will never let you be successful at becoming someone else.

If it were felt that the free development of individuality is one of the leading essentials of well-being; that it is not only a coordinate element with all that is designated by the terms civilisation, instruction, education, culture, but is itself a necessary part and condition of all those things; there would be no danger that liberty should be undervalued.