Arthur Koestler Quotes

...the Temptation, Which Consisted Of A Single Word Written On The Cemetary Of The Defeated: Sleep.

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.

The 'missing Link' Between Ape And Man Will Probably Never Be Found- Because It Was An Embryo.

In The Index To The Six Hundred Odd Pages Of Arnold Toynbee's A Study Of History, Abridged Version, The Names Of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes And Newton Do Not Occur Yet Their Cosmic Quest Destroyed The Medieval Vision Of An Immutable Social Order In A Walled-in Universe And Transformed The European Landscape, Society, Culture, Habits And General Outlook, As Thoroughly As If A New Species Had Arisen On This Planet.

One Of The Tests Of A Theory Is That, Once Grasped, It Appears Self-evident.

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.

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.

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.

As Modern Physics Started With The Newtonian Revolution, So Modern Philosophy Starts With What One Might Call The Cartesian Catastrophe. The Catastrophe Consisted In The Splitting Up Of The World Into The Realms Of Matter And Mind, And The Identification Of 'mind' With Conscious Thinking. The Result Of This Identification Was The Shallow Rationalism Of L' Esprit Cartesien, And An Impoverishment Of Psychology Which It Took Three Centuries To Remedy Even In Part.

The Cell Door Slammed Behind Rubishov.

The Self-assertive Tendency Is The Dynamic Expression Of The Holon's Wholeness, The Integrative Tendency, The Dynamic Expression Of Its Partness.

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.