Arthur Koestler Quotes
Newton's apple and Cezanne's apple are discoveries more closely related than they seem.
Creativity in science could be described as the act of putting two and two together to make five
War is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcending identification. Without loyalty to tribe, church, flag or ideal, there would be no wars.
Every creative act – in science, art, or religion – involves a regression to a more primitive level, a new innocence of perception liberated from the cataract of accepted beliefs.
The individual is not a killer, but the group is, and by identifying with it the individual is transformed into a killer.
The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood. He who will be proved right in the end appears to be wrong and harmful before it.
Show us not the aim without the way. For ends and means on earth are so entangled That changing one, you change the other too; Each different path brings other ends in view
Some of the greatest discoveries...consist mainly in the clearing away of psychological roadblocks which obstruct the approach to reality; which is why,post factum they appear so obvious.
...the temptation, which consisted of a single word written on the cemetary of the defeated: Sleep.
There is an abundance of ancient place names in the Ukraine and Poland, which derive from 'Khazar' or 'Zhid' (Jew).
The discoveries of yesterday are the truisms of tomorrow, because we can add to our knowledge but cannot subtract from it.
Adolescence is a kind of emotional seasickness. Both are funny, but only in retrospect.
Laughter and weeping, the Greek masks of comedy and tragedy, mark the extremes of a continuous spectrum; both provide channels for the overflow of emotion; both are
History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unerring, she flows towards her goal. At every bend in her course she leaves the mud which she carries and the corpses of the drowned.
the self-assertive tendency is the dynamic expression of the holon's wholeness, the integrative tendency, the dynamic expression of its partness.
We know that virtue does not matter to history, and that crimes remain unpunished; but that every error had its consequences and venges itself unto the seventh generation.
No writer or teacher or artist can escape the responsibility of influencing others whether he intends to or not, whether he is conscious of it or not.
The 'missing link' between ape and man will probably never be found- because it was an embryo.
Hitherto man had to live with the idea of death as an individual; from now onward mankind will have to live with the idea of its death as a species.
To want to meet an author because you like his books is as ridiculous as wanting to meet the goose because you like pate de foie gras.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself. Boredom sets into boring minds. The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.
Faith is a wondrous thing; it is not only capable of moving mountains, but also of making you believe that a herring is a race horse.
Habit is the denial of creativity and the negation of freedom; a self-imposed straitjacket of which the wearer is unaware.
To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one s own conscience is to abandon mankind.
You can't help people being right for the wrong reasons...This fear of finding oneself in bad company is not an expression of political purity; it is an expression of a lack of self-confidence.
The more backwoodish a social group, juvenile or adult, the stricter its conception of the normal, and the readier it will ridicule any departure from it.
There is only one prospect worse than being chained to an intolerable existence: The nightmare of a botched attempt to end it.
Each wrong idea we follow is a crime committed against future generations.
Much depends on asking the right question at the right time.
The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
Creative activity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Aberrations of the human mind are to a large extent due to the obsessional pursuit of some part-truth, treated as if it were a whole truth.
You opposed fascism, then you ditched communism.'No, I didn’t. Communism ditched me by turning into Stalinism'.
The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeleton of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life.
Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.