Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Jostein Gaarder

Norwegian Intellectual, Author of Novels, Short Stories and Children's Books

"(As human beings) We see everything everything in a glass, darkly. Sometimes we can peer through the glass and catch a glimpse of what is on the other side. If we were to polish the glass clean, we'd see much more. But then we would no longer see ourselves."

"A barrel of oil equivalent to 159 liters and was sold at that time about $ 100, about 600 crowns or about 76 euros. That barrel of oil supplied alone as much energy as 10,000 hours of physical labor, which in Norway correspond to 6 years of work per person. With an annual loose of 350,000 kroner, about 44,500 euros, equivalent to 2.1 billion kroner in salary, about $ 266,500 in those 6 years. In other words: one barrel of oil brought an energy that cost more than 2 million crowns if I had to be replaced by manual labor. And the average American consumed 25 barrels of oil per year, corresponding to 150 years of work per person and would, more or less, that an American had at all times 150 energy slaves to their service to power all cars and machines, all refrigerators and air conditioning, all airplanes, factories, farms and recreational machines... and for now only had Mention oil! They also were coal and gas... Just 600 crowns for 6 years of physical work! That would amount to 100 crowns or 12 euros for a year's work of one person. Now that could be called a wage slave!"

"A book is a magical world full of symbols that revive the dead and give the gift of eternal life to the living. It was inconceivable, fantastic, and the magic that the twenty six letters in our alphabet can be combined so as to meet the giant shelves with books and takes us to a world that is never complete. The world is always growing and growing, as long as there are human beings on this earth."

"A composition-and every work of art is one-is created in a wondrous interplay between imagination and reason, or between mind and reflection. There will always For be an element of chance in the by creative process."

"A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him."

"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."

"A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little."

"A lot of people suffer, so maybe they were dead because of grief if they did not dream of something beautiful on the sidelines of their misery."

"A large sailboat revolving around a blazing sun in the universe."

"A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat? We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because we are in it, we are part of it. Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference between us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick."

"A philosopher never gets quite used to the world."

"A Russian astronaut and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing religion. The brain surgeon was a Christian but the astronaut was not. The astronaut said, 'I've been out in space many times but I've never seen God or angels.' And the brain surgeon said, 'And I've operated on many clever brains but I've never seen a single thought."

"A real philosopher, Sophie, is completely different kettle of fish - the direct opposite, in fact. A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little."

"A rescue from indifference everyday life."

"A sensation is always the same as a piece of news, and a piece of news never lives long."

"A society that does not know and holds women is more like a human being only uses his right hand!"

"Above us the stars twinkled like Morse signals sent from the lost past."

"A true philosopher must never give up."

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

"Actually, we are the white rabbit out of the hat. The difference between us and the white rabbit is simply that the White Rabbit has no sense of participating in a game of magic."

"According to Kierkegaard, rather than searching for the Truth with a capital T, it is more important to find the kind of truths that are meaningful to the individual's life. It is important to find `the truth for me`."

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

"Adults think that everything in the world is on its own, has drowned in a final mental numbness quiet routines of daily!"

"Agnostic is one does not know whether God exists."

"All stars fall at some time. But a star is only a tiny spark from the great beacon in the sky."

"All beauty that surrounds us must one day perish."

"All a man can see while looking at the sky are cosmic fossils of thousands and millions of years ago. The only thing an astrologer can predict, is the past."

"All created things are doomed to disappear."

"Although many are bound to find that these are books for young children, they are also quite nice when we are older. You remember, of course, and on the things that we have forgotten. (Just as the story of the blue suspenders in Winnie the Pooh). You also give us a kind of security in a troubled world. And if I need something right now, a little security. Otherwise, I will tear easily in shreds."

"Although you dash a Martian in the garden, it can happen that you do yourself. The day that you can think of, maybe also put you screaming like a madman. Goodness me , every day that you discover a land of flesh and blood on a small island in the universe."

"All we need to become good philosophers is the sense of wonder."

"Although you may not stumble across a Martian in the garden, you might stumble across yourself. The day that happens, you'll probably also scream a little. And that'll be perfectly all right because it's not every day you realize you're a living planet dweller on a little island in the universe."

"Amvedclais believes that the two forces are working in two different natures: love and hate. What unites things is love, is what divides them is hate."

"Among our kind it remains amazing train toward what the last or lost. The value experience something of what the future generations to enjoy, cannot in any way to measure the value of seeing what later fall into disrepair. This sees who sees the last. Similarly widespread is the habit of arguing relatives and friends about who turned the last word with the deceased. With loss of our planet and explore the tourism industry more and more new niches and the niches in the niches I predict a bright future. Look extinct Baikal! Just a few more years, and the Maldives will be under water!, You can be the last man alive who had seen a tiger!"

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

"And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task."

"And slowly began to form of democratic forms, sees it necessary to establish the conditions of democracy, that the people become enlightened to be able to contribute to the democratic project."

"Any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers."

"Anyone who reads a lot of books, had an eye on the various unique place."

"As a Roman philosopher, Cicero, said of him a few hundred years later, Socrates 'called philosophy down from the sky and established her in the towns and introduced her into homes and forced her to investigate life, ethics, good and evil."

"And to be quite frank, that is precisely what we need philosophers for. We do not need them to choose a beauty queen or the day's bargain in tomatoes. (This is why they are often unpopular!) Philosophers will try to ignore highly topical affairs and instead try to draw people's attention to what is eternally 'true,' eternally 'beautiful,' and eternally 'good."

"As Hume expressed it. The mind is 'a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, slide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.' Hume pointed out that we have no underlying 'personal identity' beneath or behind these perceptions and feelings which come and go. It is just like the images on a movie screen. They change so rapidly we do not register that the film is made up of single pictures. In reality the pictures are not connected. The film is a collection of instants."

"As long as we are children, we have the ability to experience things around us--but then we grow used to the world. To grow up is to get drunk on sensory experience."

"Art is precisely not to use too much effort in pushing the nasty things into the subconscious."

"As she closed the gate behind her she noticed her own name on one of the big envelopes. Turning it over, she saw written on the back: Course in Philosophy. Handle with care."

"As soon as she concentrated on being alive now, the thought of dying also came into her mind."

"As for our step together to reconcile with the licentiousness of life?"

"As you can imagine, the wandering Sophists created bitter wrangling in Athens by pointing out that there were no absolute norms for what was right or wrong."

"As while filming the scene ends, and undermine his background and burns, as well as when we die; ghosts in the memories of our descendants. Then Naseer spectrums Oh dear, then Naseer legends. However , we are still together, still we last together, we're far past that . Under the dome of a mysterious past still hear your voice."

"At School she had trouble concentrating on what the teacher said. They seemed to talk only about unimportant things. Why couldn't they talk about what a human being is - or about what the world is and how it came into being?"