But understanding will always require some effort. You probably wouldn’t admire a friend who was good at everything if it cost her no effort.

Nad nami migotały gwiazdy niczym sygnały Morse’a wysyłane z utraconej przeszłości.

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...

We don’t learn anything there [school]. The difference between schoolteachers and philosophers us that school-teachers think they know a lot of stuff that they try to force down our throats. Philosophers try to figure things...

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...

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.

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.

Everything you know gained from experience

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

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.

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

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...

Kamu menulis: “Kita sudah mengatakan A, maka kita harus menyebutkan seluruh huruf.” Namun masalah itu sekarang sudah sedemikian luar biasa hingga aku menjadi ragu. Maka, kukutipkan puisi singkat dari Jan Erik Vold mengenai hal itu:”Siapa...

Kitalah planet yang hidup itu, Sophie! Kitalah kapal besar yang berlayar mengelilingi matahari yang membakar alam raya. Tapi kita masing-masing adalah juga sebuah kapal bermuatan gen-gen yang melayari kehidupan. Jika kita sudah membawa muatan ini...

What a lot of things I don’t need!

Imagine that one day you are out for a walk in the woods. Suddenly you see a small spaceship on the path in front of you. A tiny Martian climbs out the spaceship and stands...

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

I wonder whether the Christmas feeling has anything to do with the sixth sense. Perhaps we’re a little more the angels at Christmas than we are during the rest of the year. And Christmas is...

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...

I’ve nothing against eye make-up and lipstick. But the fact is that we’re actually living on a planet in space. For me that’s an extraordinary thought. It’s mind-boggling just to think about the existence of...

Socrates himself said, ‘One thing only I know, and this is that I know nothing.’ Remember this statement, because it is an admission that is rare, even among philosophers. Moreover, it can be so dangerous...

Možda se nijedna druga vrsta intimnosti ne može uporediti sa dva polgeda koja se susreću sa istom sigurnošću i odlučnošću i jednostavnošću odbijaju da se puste.

Imagine that you were on the threshold of this fairytale, sometime billions of years ago when everything was created. And you were able to choose whether you wanted to be born to a life on...

The rearing of children is considered too important to be left to the individual and should be the responsibility of the state.

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

I have gone around observing your activities from the outside. Because of this I have also been able to see things to which you have been blind… Every morning you have gone to work, but...

Me dedicó una cálida sonrisa, y esa sonrisa, podría haber derretido el mundo entero, porque si el mundo entero la hubiera visto, ella habría tenido la fuerza suficiente para acabar con todas las guerras y...

People are, generally speaking, either dead certain or totally indifferent (Both types are crawling around deep down in the rabbit’s fur!)

Un barril de petróleo equivalía a 159 litros y se vendía en ese momento a unos 100 dólares, unas 600 coronas o unos 76 euros. Ese barril de petróleo suministraba por sí solo tanta energía...

So now you must choose… Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so? To children, the world and everything in it...

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.

If just one of [those people] experiences life as a crazy adventure–and I mean that he, or she, experiences this every single day… Then he or she is a joker in a pack of cards.

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

A true philosopher must never give up.

The Cynics emphasized that true happiness is not found in external advantages such as material luxury, political power, or good health. True happiness lies in not being dependent on such random and fleeting things. And...

… 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…

Was Jesus a christian?

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...

If an overgrown child draws something on a piece of paper, you can’t ask the paper what the drawing is supposed to represent.

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,...

Don’t you think it’s a small mystery that birds can twitter so loudly that they can hear each other’s song from several miles away? Those tiny bundles are like living flutes, playing non-stop on themselves.

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...

Należymy do gatunku składającego słowa jak ryba ikrę, produkujemy więcej kultury, niż jesteśmy w stanie przetrawić. W ciągu ostatnich lat pedantycznie zwalczaliśmy graffiti na stacjach metra, a jednocześnie wydajemy miliony koron na budowę nowych bibliotek...

Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of them fall off, but others cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug...

We can be hindered in our development and our personal growth by political conditions. Outer circumstances can constrain us. Only when we are free to develop our innate abilities can we live as free beings....

If you believed in Christianity or Islam it was called ‘faith’, but if you believed in astrology or friday the thirteenth it was Superstition!

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...

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

It was all too easy to make things up, it was like skating on thin ice, it was like doing dainty pirouettes on a brittle crust over water thousands of fathoms deep.

When we die, as when the scenes have been fixed on to celluloid and the scenery is pulled down and burnt — we are phantoms in the memories of our descendants. Then we are ghosts,...