Top 150 Jostein Gaarder Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Yes, we too are stardust.”

— Jostein Gaarder

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

— Jostein Gaarder

3. “Wisest is she who knows she does not know.”

— Jostein Gaarder

4. “Life is like a huge lottery in which only the winning tickets are visible.”

— Jostein Gaarder

5. “Life consists of a long chain of coincidences.”

— Jostein Gaarder

6. “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.”

— Jostein Gaarder

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

— Jostein Gaarder

8. “The most subversive people are those who ask questions.”

— Jostein Gaarder

9. “The universe is a great mystery.”

— Jostein Gaarder

10. “It’s not a silly question if you can’t answer it.”

— Jostein Gaarder

11. “To wonder about life is not something we learn; it is something we forget.”

— Jostein Gaarder

12. “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.”

— Jostein Gaarder

13. “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.”

— Jostein Gaarder

14. “Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales.”

— Jostein Gaarder

15. “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.”

— Jostein Gaarder

16. “Dear Hilde, if the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we would still be so stupid that we couldn’t understand it. Love, Dad.”

— Jostein Gaarder

17. “The German poet Goethe once said that “he who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.” I don’t want you to end up in such a sad state. I will do what I can to acquaint you with your historical roots. It is the only way to become a human being. It is the only way to become more than a naked ape. It is the only way to avoid floating in a vacuum.”

— Jostein Gaarder

18. “Hegel said that ‘truth’ is subjective, thus rejecting the existence of any ‘truth’ above or beyond human reason. All knowledge is human knowledge.”

— Jostein Gaarder

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

— Jostein Gaarder

20. “At some point, something must have come from nothing.”

— Jostein Gaarder

21. “For nature is good, an man is ‘by nature’ good; it is civilization which ruins him.”

— Jostein Gaarder

22. “We do not believe in the notion of God’s chosen people. We laugh at this people’s fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God’s chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.”

— Jostein Gaarder

23. “Over the entrance to the temple at Delphi was a famous inscription: KNOW THYSELF! It reminded visitors that man must never believe himself to be more than mortal – and that no man can escape his destiny.”

— Jostein Gaarder

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

— Jostein Gaarder

25. “There is always Joker to see through the delusion. Generation succeeds generation, but there is a fool walking the earth who is never ravaged by time.”

— Jostein Gaarder

26. “Some are more equal than others.”

— Jostein Gaarder

27. “It takes billions of years to create a human being. And it takes only a few seconds to die.”

— Jostein Gaarder

28. “There is no order of things except in the human mind.”

— Jostein Gaarder

29. “It is not easy, for example, to surgically remove a delusion. It grows too deep, as it were, for surgery.”

— Jostein Gaarder

30. “But when these basic needs have been satisfied – will there still be something that everybody needs? Philosophers think so. They believe that man cannot live by bread alone. Of course everyone needs food. And everyone needs love and care. But there is something else – apart from that – which everyone needs, and that is to figure out who we are and why we are here.”

— Jostein Gaarder

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

— Jostein Gaarder

32. “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.”

— Jostein Gaarder

33. “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.”

— Jostein Gaarder

34. “The soul yearns to fly home on the wings of love to the world of ideas. It longs to be freed from the chains of the body.”

— Jostein Gaarder

35. “Geboren zu werden bedeutet, die ganze Welt geschenkt zu bekommen.”

— Jostein Gaarder

36. “Then you have a big problem, because a human is a thinking animal. If you don’t think, you’re not really a human.”

— Jostein Gaarder

37. “If we don’t know where we are going, it can be helpful to know where we come from.”

— Jostein Gaarder

38. “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.”

— Jostein Gaarder

39. “Maybe we can comprehend a flower or an insect, but we can never comprehend ourselves. Even less can we expect to comprehend the universe.”

— Jostein Gaarder

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

— Jostein Gaarder

41. “Nothing is ordirary. Sometimes people talk about ‘an ordinary day’. This annoys me, because no two days are the same, and we have no idea how many more days of life we have left. Perhaps even worse than ‘ordinary’ hens or ‘ordinary’ days is talking about an ‘ordinary’ boy or girl. This is the sort of thing we say when we can’t be bothered to get to know people better.”

— Jostein Gaarder

42. “Sophie saw that the philosopher was right. Grownups took the world for granted. They had let themselves be lulled into the enchanted sleep of their humdrum existence once and for all. ‘You’ve just grown so used to the world that nothing surprises you any more.”

— Jostein Gaarder

43. “But the dream of something unlikely has its own special name. We call it hope.”

— Jostein Gaarder

44. “The truth is that I feel totally helpless, or totally inconsolable, to be more honest. I’m not trying to hide it, but it’s something you’re not to worry about.”

— Jostein Gaarder

45. “I’m not just some butterfly for you to catch.”

— Jostein Gaarder

46. “The stupidest thing she knew was for people to act like they knew all about the things they knew absolutely nothing about.”

— Jostein Gaarder

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

— Jostein Gaarder

48. “The history of thought – or of reason – is like this river. The thoughts that are washed along with the current of past tradition, as well as the material conditions prevailing at the time, help to determine how you think. You can therefore never claim that any particular thought is correct for ever and ever. But the thought can be correct from where you stand.”

— Jostein Gaarder

49. “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.”

— Jostein Gaarder

50. “Maybe the imagination creates what is new, but the imagination does not make the actual selection. The imagination does not “compose.” A composition – and every work of art is one – is created in a wondrous interplay between imagination and reason, or between mind and reflection. For there will always be an element of chance in the creative process. You have to turn the sheep loose before you can start to herd them.”

— Jostein Gaarder