Jostein Gaarder Quotes

Life is both sad and solemn. We are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other---and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.

How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living.

An answer is always on the stretch of road that is behind you. Only a question can point the way forward.

A state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm.

A hydrogen atom in a cell at the end of my nose was once part of an elephant's trunk. A carbon atom in my cardiac muscle was once in the tail of a dinosaur.

You can never know if a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. It’s something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don't think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first kiss.

Life consists of a long chain of coincidences.

The most subversive people are those who ask questions.

Yes, we too are stardust.

Superstitious." What a strange word. If you believed in Christianity or Islam, it was called "faith". But if you believed in astrology or Friday the thirteenth it was superstition! Who had the right to call other people's belief superstition?

When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way to ourselves.

I sat thinking how terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as incredible as living. One day we suddenly take the fact that we exist for granted - and then, yes, then we don’t think about it anymore until we are about to leave the world again.

Life is short for those who are truly able to understand that one day the entire world will come to a complete end. Not everyone is capable of that. Not everyone has the ability to comprehend what going away for all eternity really implies. There are too many distractions, hour by hour, minute by minute, to hinder such an understanding.

The question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a persons needs.

Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others.

Where both reason and experience fall short, there occurs a vacuum that can be filled by faith.

There are five billion people living on this planet. But you fall in love with one particular person, and you won't swap her for any other.

Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone off course because of a physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a 'sound mind in a sound body'.

Wasn’t it extraordinary to be in the world right now, wandering around in a wonderful adventure!

Wisest is she who knows she does not know.

It is different for us mortals. We are the ones who become old and grey. We are the ones who become worn at the seams and disappear. But not our dreams. They can live on in other people even after we have gone.

People are, generally speaking, either dead certain or totally indifferent.

When you realize there is something you don't understand, then you're generally on the right path to understanding all kinds of things.

To prove religious faith by human reason is rationalistic claptrap.

Since the Renaissance, people have had to get used to living their life on a random planet in the vast galaxy.