Quotes from Arthur Koestler

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.

Its benefits to the poet are evident: the rhyme is merely a glorified pun, two strings of ideas bisociated in an acoustic knot.

Prometheus is reaching out for the stars with an empty grin on his face.

Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.

The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.

If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction

Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which - miraculously, it seems - merge into a significant event.

If the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to stick it out.

Adolescence is a kind of emotional seasickness. Both are funny, but only in retrospect.

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.

What is an editor but a cross between a fall guy and a father figure? arthur koestler

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

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.

Habit is the denial of creativity and the negation of freedom; a self-imposed straitjacket of which the wearer is unaware.

Creativity in science could be described as the act of putting two and two together to make five