quotablebookquotes discussion

What quotes did you enjoy?

The Garden of Eden:

"Wasn't it odd that she didn't know who she was? And wasn't it unreasonable that she hadn't been allowed to have any say in what she would look like?" ~ page 6

"She had not even chosen to be a human being." ~ page 6

"I am in the world now, she thought, but one day I shall be gone." ~ page 6

"As soon as she concentrated on being alive now, the thought of dying also came into her mind." ~ page 7

"Even though God could create all kinds of things, he could hardly create himself before he had a "self" to create with. So there was only one possibility left: God had always existed. But she had already rejected that possibility! Everything that existed had to have a beginning." ~ page 9

"Who are you?
Where does the world come from?
What annoying questions! And anyway where did the letters come from? That was just as mysterious, almost." ~ page 9

"who had jolted Sophie out of her everyday existence and suddenly brought her face to face with the great riddles of the universe?" ~ page 9

The Top Hat:

"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?" ~ page 12

"'Do you mind telling me what's suddenly so important?'
Sophie just shook her head. 'It's...it's a secret.'
'Yuck! You're probably in love.'" ~ page 13

"why was it so difficult to be absorbed in the most vital and, in a way, the most natural of all questions?" ~ page 13

“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.” ~ page 13

"Lots of people have hobbies. some people collect old coins or foreign stamps, some do needlework, others spend most of their spare time on a particular sport." ~ page 14

"Philosophers are always trying to climb up the fine hairs of the fur in order to stare right into the magician's eyes." ~ page 16

"Hello again! As you see, this short course in philosophy will come in handy-sized portions." ~ page 17

"The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder." ~ page 17

"I am an extraordinary being, you think. I am a mysterious creature." ~ page 18

"To be more precise: although philosophical questions concern us all, we do not all become philosophers." ~ page 19

"This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. to him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable - bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. You might say that throughout his life a philosopher remains as thin-skinned as a child." ~ Page 20

"To Summarize briefly: A white rabbit is pulled out of a top hat. Because it is an extremely large rabbit, the trick takes many billions of years. All mortals are born at the very tip of the rabbit's fine hairs. where they are in a position to wonder at the impossibility of the trick. But as they grow older they work themselves even deeper into the fur. And there they stay. They become so comfortable they never risk crawling back up the fragile hairs again. Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of the fall off, but other cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' they yell, 'we are floating in space!' but none of the people down there care.
'What a bunch of troublemakers!' they say. And they keep on chatting: Would you pass the butter, please? How much have our stocks risen today? What is the price of tomatoes? Have you heard that Princes Di is expecting again?" ~ page 20

"The philosopher had rescued her. The unknown letter writter had saved her from the triviality of everyday existence." ~ page 21

The Myths:

"The earliest Greek philosopher's criticized Homer's mythology because the gods resembled mortals too much and were just as egotistic and treacherous." ~ Page 28

"They made up all those myths in the time before there was anything called science." ~ page 29

The Natural Philosophers:

"I said his line of thought - referring to the philosopher, because this is also a story of men." ~page 32

"I do not intend to give you any homework - no difficult math questions, or anything like that, and conjugating English verbs is outside my sphere of interest. However, from time to time I'll give you a short assignment." ~ page 32

"Sophie found philosophy doubly exciting because she was able to follow all the ideas by using her own common sense - without having to remember everything she had learned at school. She decided that philosophy was not something you can learn; but perhaps you can learn to think philosophically." ~ page 42

Democritus:

"'I'm not playing!' Sophie retorted indignantly, 'I'm doing a very important philosophical experiment!'" ~ page 42

"Sophie couldn't stop smiling. It had to be true that nature was built up of small parts that never changed. At the same time Heraclitus was obviously right in thinking that all forms in nature 'flow'. Because everybody dies, animals die, even a mountain range slowly disintegrates. The point was that the mountain range is made up of tiny indivisible parts that never break up." ~ page 48

fate:

"'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?" ~ page 50

"Her mother was clearly worried. She had started speaking to Sophie in a different tone since this business with the white rabbit and the top hat. Sophie hated to be a worry to her mother, but she just had to go upstairs and keep an eye on the mail box." ~ page 52

"Thus the 'fortune-teller' is trying to foresee something that is really quite unforeseeable. This is characteristic of all forms of foreseeing. And precisely because what they 'see' is so vague, it is hard to repudiate fortune-tellers' claims." ~ page 54

"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." ~ page 55

Socrates:

"Is there such a thing as natural modesty?
Wisest is she who knows she does not know...
True insight comes from within.
He who knows what is right will do right." ~ page 60

"Sophie knew that 'modesty' was an old-fashioned word for shyness - for example, about being seen naked. But was it really natural to be embarrassed about that? If something was natural, she supposed, it was the same for everybody. In many parts of the world it was completely natural to be naked. So it must be society that decides what you can and can't do. When Grandma was young you certainly couldn't sunbathe topless. But today, most people think it is 'natural,' even though it is still strictly forbidden in lots of countries. Was this philosophy? Sophie wondered." ~ page 60

"The next sentence was about true insight coming from within. But didn't all knowledge come into people's heads from the outside? On the other hand, Sophie could remember situations when her mother or the teachers at school had tried to teach her something that she hadn't been receptive to. And whenever she had really learned something, it was when she had somehow contributed to it herself. Now and then, even, she would suddenly a thing she'd drawn a total blank on before. That was probably what people meant by 'insight'." ~page 61

"When you read this you may already have met Hermes. In case you haven't, I'll add that he is a dog. But don't worry. he is very good-tempered - and moreover, a good deal more intelligent than a lot of people. In any event he never tries to give the impression of being cleverer than he is." ~ page 62

"Man is the measure of all things" ~ [Protagoras] Page 64

"The sophists were as a rule men who had traveled widely and seen different forms of government. Both conventions and local laws in the city-states could vary widely. This led the Sophists to raise the question of what was natural and what was socially induced. By doing this, they paved the way for social criticism in the city-state of Athens." ~ page 64

"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." ~ Page 64

"Socrates (770-399 B.C.[E.]) is possibly the most enigmatic figure in the entire history of philosophy. He never wrote a single line. Yet he is one of the philosophers who has had the greatest influence on European thought, not least because of the dramatic manner of his death." ~ page 65

"It is Plato's portrait of Socrates that has inspired thinkers in the Western world for nearly 2.500 years." ~ page 66

"He just asked questions, especially to begin a conversation, as if he knew nothing. In the course of the discussion he would generally get his opponents to recognize the weakness of their arguments, and, forced into a corner, they would finally be obliged to realize what was right and what was wrong." ~ page 66

"Let me put it more precisely: The ability to give birth is a natural characteristic. In the same way, everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason." ~ Page 66

"In the year 399 B.C.[E.] he was accused of "introducing new gods and corrupting the youth," as well as not believing in the accepted gods. With a slender majority, a jury of five hundred found him guilty." ~ page 67

"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.'" ~ page 68

"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." ~ page 69

"Socrates himself said, 'One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.'" ~ page 69

Plato:

"In the garden everything was wonderfully clear and still. The birds were chirping so energetically that Sophie could hardly keep from laughing. The morning dew twinkled in the grass like drops of crystal. Once again she was struck by the incredible wonder of the world." ~ page 79

"If a baker makes fifty absolutely identical cookies, he must be using the same pastry mold for all of them." ~ page 80

"What Plato was really asking was perhaps why a horse was a horse, and not, for example, a cross between a horse and a pig." ~ page 80

"Her grandmother had said once that she felt it was only her body that was old. Inside she had always been the same young girl" ~ page 81

"That fact that Athens could condemn its noblest citizen to death did more than make a profound impression on him. it was to shape the course of his entire philosophic endeavor." ~ page 82

"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.'" ~ page 83

"you would realize that all the cookies were formed in the same mold. And what is more, Sophie, you are now seized by the irresistible desire to see this mold. Because clearly, the mold itself must be utter perfection - and in a sense, more beautiful - in comparison with these crude copies." ~ page 85

"Plato's point is that we can never have true knowledge of anything that is in a constant state of change. We can only have opinions about things that belong to the world of the senses, tangible things. We can only have true knowledge if things that can be understood with our reason." ~ page 86

"The faculty of vision can vary from person to person. On the other hand, we can rely on what our reason tells us because that is the same for everyone" ~ page 87

"Plato found mathematics very absorbing because mathematical states never change." ~ page 87

"But that's not all, Sophie. IT'S NOT ALL!" ~ page 88

"Nowadays we would perhaps call Plato's state totalitarian." ~ page 92

"However, he did say that a state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm." ~ page 92

"It was rather like having been color-blind. She had seen some shadows but had not seen the clear ideas." ~ page 93

"it was a beautiful thought that all living things were imperfect copies of the eternal forms in the world of ideas" ~ page 93




Aristotle:

"He was not only the last of the great Greek philosophers, he was Europe's first great biologist" ~ page 105

"On the Contrary, to Aristotle the 'forms' were in the things because they were the particular characteristics of these things" ~ page 107

"So we go around pigeonholing everything. We put cows in cowsheds, horses in stables, pigs in pigsties, and chickens in chicken coops. The same happens when Sophie Amundsen tidies up her room. She puts her books on the bookshelf, her schoolbooks in her schoolbag, and her magazines in the drawer. She folds her clothes neatly and puts them in the closet - underwear on one shelf, sweaters on another, and socks in a drawer on their own. Notice that we do the same thing in our minds. we distinguish between things made of stone, things made of wool, and things made of rubber. We distinguish between things that are alive or dead, and we distinguish between vegetables, animal, and human." ~ Page 111

Hellenism:

"Dear Hilde,
I assume you're still celebrating your 15th birthday. Or is it the morning after? Anyways, it makes no difference to your present. In a sense, that will last a life time. But I'd like to wish you happy birthday one more time. Perhaps you understand now why I send the cards to Sophie. I am sure she will pass them on to you.
P.S. Mom said you lost your wallet. I hereby promise to reimburse you the 150 crowns. You will probably be able to get another school I.D. before they close for the summer vacation.
Love from Dad." ~ Page 120

"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 because happiness does not consist in benefits of this kind, it is within everyone's reach. moreover, having once been attained, it can never be lost. " ~ Page 129

"Plotinus believed that the world is span between two polls. At one end is the divine light which he calls the One. Sometimes he calls it God. At the other end is absolute darkness, which receives none of the light from the One. But Plotinus' point is that this darkness actually has no existence. It simply is the absence of light - in other words, it 'is' not. All that exists is God, or the One, but in the same way that a beam of light grows progressively dimmer and is gradually extinguished, there is somewhere that the divine glow cannot reach" ~ Page 133