Quotes from Arthur Koestler

The French attitude to the Finnish War reminded one of the voyeur who gets his thrills out of other people's virile exploits, which he is unable to imitate

We are indeed a blind race,' wrote a contemporary scientist, 'and the next generation, blind to its own blindness, will be amazed at ours.

Newcomers from Paris transmitted to us Goebbels' ironic congratulations on our cordial reception in the Land of Freedom. Voelkischer Beobachter, the official Nazi organ, published a list of anti-Nazi authors interned in France, asking them whether they still clung to the blessings of democracy. It was cheap irony, but it cut to the quick; it hurt and stung and burnt.

The HAHA reaction signals the collision of bisociated contexts, the AHA reaction signals their fusion, the AH reaction their juxtaposition.

But where is the jury who decides whether devotion is of the 'right' or the 'misguided' kind?

The roads that lead man to knowledge are as wondrous as that knowledge itself.

You, Comrade Rubashov, have just used the same arguments as this women's delegation from Manchester. You, of course, know better than these women. So one may wonder at your using the same arguments. But then, you have something in common with them: you were given a watch as a child….

To this day, in spite of great efforts, Lamarckism has failed to produce conclusive evidence to prove that acquired characters are transmitted to the offspring; and it seems fairly certain that, while experience does affect heredity, it does not do so in this simple and direct way.

It is impossible to reign innocently. Saint-Just

Now microbes seem to have an enormous mutation rate (or some other method of hereditary adaptation), for, within a few years, they have evolved new drug-resistant strains. We humans cannot perform such evolutionary feats. But we can simulate major adaptive mutations by adding iodine to the drinking water, or by putting drops into the eyes of the newborn, to protect them from enemies against which our natural defences are inadequate.

Every creative act involves... a new innocence of perception, liberated from the cataract of accepted belief.

One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions.

A publisher who writes is like a cow in a milk bar.

One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.

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.

Two half-truths do not make a truth, and two half- cultures do not make a culture

The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition.

Courage is never letting your actions be influenced by your fears.

God seems to have the receiver off the hook.

Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.

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.

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.

The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.

The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use.