Jostein Gaarder

When forced to choose between relying either on his senses or his reason, he chose reason

cannot step twice into the same river.

“The opinions of most people,” he said, “are like the playthings of infants.”

Democritus once said that he would rather discover a new cause of nature than be the King of Persia.

THE ONLY THING WE REQUIRE TO BE GOOD PHILOSOPHERS IS THE FACULTY OF WONDER.

By philosophy we mean the completely new way of thinking that evolved in Greece about six hundred years before the birth of Christ.

Parmenides thought that everything that exists had always existed.

This unshakable faith in human reason is called rationalism. A rationalist is someone who believes that human reason is the primary source of our knowledge of the world.

Heraditus (c. 540-480 B.C.), who was from Ephesus in Asia Minor. He thought that constant change, or flow, was in fact the mosf basic characteristic of nature.

Parmenides and Heraclitus both say two things:

Parmenides says:

a) that nothing can change, andb) that our sensory perceptions must therefore be unreliable. Heraclitus, on the

other hand, says:

a) that everything changes ("all things flow"), andb) that our sensory perceptions are reliable.