quote · Legacy record
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 is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course. 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. The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder…
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 is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course. 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. The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder…
Approximate author period: c. 1952 AD · modern
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- Jostein Gaarder
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- Approximate author period: c. 1952 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from documented birth year 1952; activity date not established; Wikidata Q185548, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q185548 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 4387; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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