Quotes from Arthur Koestler

History had a slow pulse; man counted in years, history in generations

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.

The 'missing link' between ape and man will probably never be found- because it was an embryo.

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.

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.

If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.

The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan.

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.

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

Honor is decency without vanity.

In any language it is a struggle to make a sentence say exactly what you mean.

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.

True creativity often starts where language ends.

The discoveries of yesterday are the truisms of tomorrow, because we can add to our knowledge but cannot subtract from it.

Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

There is only one prospect worse than being chained to an intolerable existence: The nightmare of a botched attempt to end it.

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.

Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.

The progress of science, like an ancient desert trail, is strewn with the bleached skeletons of discarded theories, doctrines, and axioms which seemed to possess eternal life.

Newton's apple and Cezanne's apple are discoveries more closely related than they seem.

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 principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.

The individual is not a killer, but the group is, and by identifying with it the individual is transformed into a killer.

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.