Jostein Gaarder
We are the living planet!Collection: Life
I wrote Sophies World in three months, but I was only writing and sleeping. I work for 14 hours a day when Im working on a book.Collection: Book
A Russian cosmonaut and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing Christianity. The brain surgeon was a Christian, but the cosmonaut wasn’t. ‘I have been in outer space many times,’ bragged the cosmonaut, ‘but I have never seen any angels.’ The brain surgeon stared in amazement, but then he said, ‘And I have operated on many intelligent brains, but I have never seen a single thought.Collection: Christian
Moreover, nature's blocks had to be eternal-because nothing can come from nothing.Collection: Block
Athens is like a sluggish horse, and I am the gadfly trying to sting it into life.Collection: Horse
There is no order of things except in the human mind.Collection: Order
Perhaps the clock hands had become so tired of going in the same direction year after year that they had suddenly begun to go the opposite way instead.Collection: Tired
Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to 'give birth' to correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. . . . Everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason.Collection: Mother
If an overgrown child draws something on a piece of paper, you can't ask the paper what the drawing is supposed to represent.Collection: Children
Love, your own witch-daughter, Queen of the Mirror and the Highest Protector of IronyCollection: Daughter
He could very likely have appealed for leniency. At least he could have saved his life by agreeing to leave Athens. But had he done this he would not have been Socrates. He valued his conscience--and the truth-- higher than life.Collection: Done