Sophie's World

by Jostein Gaarder

One of the Baroque period’s favorite sayings was the Latin expression ‘carpe diem’—‘seize the day.’ Another Latin expression that was widely quoted was ‘memento mori,’ which means ‘remember that you must die.’ In

‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep…’”

‘What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story, and the greatest good is little enough, for all life is a dream…’”

“Everything was thus governed by the same unbreakable laws—or by the same mechanisms. It is therefore possible in principle to calculate every natural change with mathematical precision. And thus Newton completed what we call the mechanistic world view.”

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.’”

“For the mind of man is not just ‘passive wax’ which simply receives sensations from outside. The mind leaves its imprint on the way we apprehend the world. You could compare it with what happens when you pour water into a glass pitcher. The water adapts itself to the pitcher’s form. In the same way our perceptions adapt themselves to our ‘forms of intuition.’”

Kant’s point was that man’s “practical reason” requires the nations to emerge from their wild state of nature which creates wars, and contract to keep the peace.

everything man touches becomes a mixture of good and evil.

Mankind will always create new problems to fight about.”