Jostein Gaarder Quotes

Reply to Plato: I seen horses I seen cows I haint never yet seen horsiness nor that there bovinity neither.

'Do not touch ontologically' doesn't mean 'are separated by empirically measurable hard edges.'

Philosophy teaches you to think big.

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.

"Who am I?" is not really a question because it has no answer to it; it is unanswerable. It is a device, not a question.

It's the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.

Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak.

Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.

Beneath the surface of repartee and mock seriousness, [Plato's Phaedrus] is asking whether we ought to prefer a neuter form of speech to the kind which is ever getting us aroused over things and provoking an expense of spirit.

I see philosophy as a fairly abstract activity, as concerned mainly with the analysis of criticism and concepts, and of course most usefully of scientific concepts.

Philosophy ... should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of.

Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth'...Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory - it may only be about some small matter, or it may be about the universe. I think that most of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in philosophy, has been a result of just such a moment.

I stick my finger into existence.. it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? What is this thing called the world? What does this word mean?

Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.

It is by no means certain that we advance our philosophical quest by reading Plato or Aristotle. It may increase our knowledge of history but not of the world.

Is the ground a philosophical concept? Has mind a relationship to the ground? Is it an idea to be investigated? Is the ground put together by thought?

When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato's Republic, front cover facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was excited by it and knew it was something wonderful.

Ralph also took some classes in philosophy and literature and felt himself on the brink of some kind of huge discovery about himself. But it never came.

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

I intend Deaths in Venice to contribute both to literary criticism and to philosophy. But it's not "strict philosophy" in the sense of arguing for specific theses. As I remark, there's a style of philosophy - present in writers from Plato to Rawls - that invites readers to consider a certain class of phenomena in a new way. In the book, I associate this, in particular, with my good friend, the eminent philosopher of science, Nancy Cartwright, who practices it extremely skilfully.

Philosophy does not regard pedigree, she received Plato not as a noble, but she made him one.

All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.

Who am I? is the only question worth asking and the only one never answered.