Top 100 Arthur Koestler Quotes

#1. The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #33989
#2. [My father] loved me tenderly and shyly from a distance, and later on took a naive pride in seeing my name in print.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #37182
#3. Perhaps he did not know himself - like all these intellectual cynics ...

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #41457
#4. In my youth I regarded the Universe as an open book, printed in the language of physical equations, whereas now it appears to me as a text written in invisible ink, of which, in our rare moments of grace, we are able to decipher a small fragment.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #72813
#5. The real achievement in discoveries ... is seeing an analogy where no one saw one before.. The essence of discovery is that unlikely marriage of ... previously unrelated forms of reference or universes of discourse, whose union will solve the previously insoluble problem.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #76931
#6. The 'gallows' are not only a symbol of death, but also a symbol of cruelty, terror and irreverence for life; the common denominator of primitive savagery, medieval fanaticism and modern totalitarianism.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #88679
#7. and there was only one revolutionary virtue which he had not learned, the virtue of self-deception

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #95278
#8. The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only rule of political ethics; anything else is just a vague chatter and melts away between one's fingers.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #97888
#9. Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #115139
#10. A writer's ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years' time and for one reader in a hundred years' time.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #118658
#11. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #121349
#12. 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

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #122021
#13. If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #133836
#14. 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.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #157409
#15. Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #171500
#16. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #183175
#17. Every error has its consequences and venges itself unto the seventh generation.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #184736
#18. The disastrous history of our species indicates the futility of all attempts at a diagnosis which do not take into account the possibility that homo sapiens is a victim of one of evolution's countless mistakes.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #223683
#19. Revolutionary theory had frozen to a dogmatic cult, with a simplified, easily graspable catechism, and with No. 1 as the high priest celebrating the Mass.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #238022
#20. One question that people always ask at home is never asked here: "What happened to Communism in Russia?" Everybody yawns when a visitor brings it up, because the answer is so obvious to every Russian. The answer is that there never was Communism in Russia; there were only communists.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #248128
#21. In creating the human brain, evolution has wildly overshot the mark.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #306931
#22. In the course of the last century science has become so dizzy with its successes, that it has forgotten to ask the pertinent questions- or refused to ask them under the pretext that they are meaningless, and in any case not the scientists concern.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #360794
#23. Most of us were not afraid of death, only of the act of dying; and there were times when we overcame even this fear. At such moments we were free-men without shadows, dismissed from the ranks of the mortal; it was the most complete experience of freedom that can be granted a man.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #374956
#24. The temptation, which consisted of a single word written on the cemetary of the defeated: Sleep.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #406551
#25. I have already thought it over,' said Rubashov. 'I reject your proposition. Logically, you may be right. But I have had enough of this kind of logic. I am tired and I don't want to play this game anymore. Be kind enough to have me taken back to my cell.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #453023
#26. The discoveries of yesterday are the truisms of tomorrow, because we can add to our knowledge but cannot subtract from it.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #481310
#27. The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #509616
#28. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #511327
#29. Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #529904
#30. God seems to have left the receiver off the hook and time is running out.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #534022
#31. But who will be proved right? It will only be known later. Meanwhile he is bound to act on credit and sell his soul to the devil, in the hope of history's absolution.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #543290
#32. The addiction to the Soviet myth is as tenacious and difficult to cure as any other addiction.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #549612
#33. 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.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #564387
#34. The thing represented had to pass through two distorting lenses: the artist's mind, and his medium of expression, before it emerged as a man-made dream - the two, of course, being intimately connected and interacting with each other.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #565123
#35. The creative act does not create something out of nothing; it uncovers, selects, reshuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, ideas, faculties, and skills.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #594058
#36. Brain-washing starts in the cradle.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #646063
#37. From the psychological point of view, the self-asserting emotions, derived from emergency reactions, involve a narrowing of consciousness; the participatory emotions an expansion of consciousness by identificatory processes of various kinds.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #683257
#38. One of the tests of a theory is that, once grasped, it appears self-evident.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #691321
#39. Creative activity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #710721
#40. The jester is brother to the sage.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #767116
#41. Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one's own nervous system.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #769980
#42. Habit is the denial of creativity and the negation of freedom; a self-imposed straitjacket of which the wearer is unaware.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #780454
#43. History had a slow pulse; man counted in years, history in generations

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #785547
#44. Death tripped down the corridor, changing step, struck out here and there, danced pirouettes; often I felt his breath on my face when he was miles away; often I fell asleep and dreamed while he stood leaning over my bed.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #795747
#45. If conquerors be regarded as the engine-drivers of History, then the conquerors of thought are perhaps the pointsmen who, less conspicuous to the traveler's eye, determine the direction of the journey.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #823140
#46. There is an abundance of ancient place names in the Ukraine and Poland, which derive from 'Khazar' or 'Zhid' (Jew).

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #840644
#47. The fact is: I no longer believe in my own infallibility. That is why I am lost.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #844712
#48. What is an editor but a cross between a fall guy and a father figure? arthur koestler

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #854542
#49. The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #866588
#50. One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #889653
#51. Two half-truths do not make a truth, and two half- cultures do not make a culture

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #929574
#52. There was a dense fog in my brain,impenetrable to any coherent thought,except the dull obsession of counting the minutes - an aching state of semi concsiousness and numb idiocy.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #929697
#53. The hangman is a disgrace to any civilized country.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #986720
#54. History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unnering flows towards her goal. History knows herway. She makes no mistakes.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #995291
#55. Creativity in science could be described as the act of putting two and two together to make five

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #996188
#56. You opposed fascism, then you ditched communism.
'No, I didn't. Communism ditched me by turning into Stalinism'.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1014436
#57. God is dethroned; and although the incognizant masses are tardy in realizing the event, they feel the icy draught caused by that vacancy. Man enters upon a spiritual ice age; the established churches can no longer provide more than Eskimo huts where their shivering flock huddles together.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1038204
#58. We whip the groaning masses of the country towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can see.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1075092
#59. History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1082985
#60. Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1083256
#61. Men cannot be treated as units in operations of political arithmetic because they behave like the symbols for zero and the infinite , which dislocate all mathematical operations.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1089250
#62. Newton's apple and Cezanne's apple are discoveries more closely related than they seem.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1103008
#63. Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1109376
#64. The ultimate truth is penultimately a falsehood.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1133334
#65. Honor is decency without vanity.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1172327
#66. The revolutions of thought which shape the basic outlook of an age are not disseminated through text-books- they spread like epidemics, through contamination by invisible agents and innocent germ carriers, by the most varied forms of contact, or simply by breathing the common air.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1208728
#67. The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1225015
#68. Man has an irrepressible tendency to read meaning into the buzzing confusion of sights and sounds impinging on his senses; and where no agreed meaning can be found, he will provide it out of his own imagination.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1264774
#69. The individual is not a killer, but the group is, and by identifying with it the individual is transformed into a killer.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1285166
#70. The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1291072
#71. 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.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1295166
#72. I believe that the evidence for telepathy is overwhelming and that it is a part of reality that is above science. Science allows us to glimpse [only] fragments of reality.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1325303
#73. We find in the history of ideas mutations which do not seem to correspond to any obvious need, and at first sight appear as mere playful whimsies such as Apollonius' work on conic sections, or the non-Euclidean geometries, whose practical value became apparent only later.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1337488
#74. The distance between the library and the bedroom is astronomical

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1341136
#75. Solitary confinement is rock bottom, it's absolute unfreedom.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1361361
#76. If the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to stick it out.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1370313
#77. The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1401727
#78. Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1409722
#79. The self-assertive tendency is the dynamic expression of the holon's wholeness, the integrative tendency, the dynamic expression of its partness.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1411484
#80. Two half truths do not make a truth.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1426881
#81. 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.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1481636
#82. In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection
quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection tautology.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1570585
#83. A sadist is a person who is kind to a masochist.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1580695
#84. The new frontiers to be conquered are mainly in the convolutions of the cortex.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1592124
#85. The evils of mankind are caused, not by the primary aggressiveness of individuals, but by their self-transcending identification with groups whose common denominator is low intelligence and high emotionality.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1598538
#86. There is only one prospect worse than being chained to an intolerable existence: The nightmare of a botched attempt to end it.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1604067
#87. True creativity often starts where language ends.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1623317
#88. In any language it is a struggle to make a sentence say exactly what you mean.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1624975
#89. Each wrong idea we follow is a crime committed against future generations.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1627651
#90. I am not sure whether ethical absolutes exist. But I am sure that we have to act as if they existed or civilization perishes.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1629704
#91. Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1638493
#92. When all is said, its atmosphere [England's] still contains fewer germs of aggression and brutality per cubic foot in a crowded bus, pub or queue than in any other country in which I have lived

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1657229
#93. Without the hard little bits of marble which are called 'facts' or 'data' one cannot compose a mosaic; what matters, however, are not so much the individual bits, but the successive patterns into which you arrange them, then break them up and rearrange them.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1687900
#94. The crimes of violence committed for selfish, personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majorem gloriam Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to the flag, a leader, a religeous faith or political conviction.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1692924
#95. Among all forms of mentation, verbal thinking is the most articulate, the most complex, and the most vulnerable to infectious diseases. It is liable to absorb whispered suggestions, and to incorporate them as hidden persuaders into the code.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1701476
#96. Had not history always been an inhumane, unscrupulous builder, mixing its mortar of lies, blood and mud?

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1731787
#97. The deterioration of the intelligentsia is as much a symptom of disease as the corruption of the ruling class or the sleeping sickness of the proletariat.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1732631
#98. Nothing is worse in prison than the consciousness of one's innocenc; it prevents acclimatizatin and undermines one's morale ...

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1798265
#99. Conscious and unconscious experiences do not belong to different compartments of the mind; they form a continuous scale of gradations, of degrees of awareness.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1818016
#100. 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.

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes #1865954

Famous Authors

Popular Topics

Scroll to Top