Quotes from Arthur Koestler

El odio, como el amor, solo florece donde hay algo en común, donde existe un común denominador.

El marxismo, como el freudianismo ortodoxo, como el catolicismo, es un sistema cerrado. El sistema cerrado excluye la posibilidad de la argumentación objetiva, mediante dos procedimientos relacionados entre sí: a) de acuerdo con las reglas escolásticas, se quita todo valor probatorio a los hechos; b) se invalidan las objeciones desplazando la discusión al motivo psicológico que provoca la objeción.

Comic discovery is paradox stated-scientific discovery is paradox resolved.

An emotionally maladjusted species , we have the uncanny power of turning every blessing, including language, into a curse.

Art, like religion, is a school of self-transcendence; it expands individual awareness into cosmic awareness, as science teaches us to reduce any particular puzzle to the great universal puzzle.

On successively higher levels of the hierarchy we find more complex, flexible and less predictable patterns of activity, while on successively lower levels we find more and more mechanised, stereotyped and predictable patterns. In the language of the physicist, a holon on a higher level of the hierarchy has more degrees of freedom than a holon on a lower level.

Coghill has shown that the motor patterns of the animal develop prior to the development of sensory innervation.

the integration of matrices is not a simple operation of adding together. It is a process of mutual interference and cross-fertilization, in the course of which both matrices are transformed in various ways and degrees. Hidden axioms, implied in the old codes, suddenly stand revealed and are subsequently dropped; the rules of the game are revised before they enter as sub-rules into the composite game. When Einstein bisociated energy and matter, both acquired a new look in the process.

Complexity of thought is no measure of originality.

In other words, evolution is neither a free-for-all, nor the execution of a rigidly predetermined computer programme. It could be compared to a musical composition whose possibilities are limited by the rules of harmony and the structure of the diatonic scales-which, however, permit an inexhaustible number of original creations. Or it could be compared to the game of chess obeying fixed rules but with equally inexhaustible variations.

The distance between the library and the bedroom is astronomical

Let me repeat: the crimes of violence committed for selfish personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majoram gloriam Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to a flag, a leader, a religious faith, or a political conviction. Man has always been prepared not only to kill but also to die for good, bad or completely futile causes. And what can be a more valid proof of the reality of the self-transcending urge than this readiness to die for an ideal?

paradise cannot be constructed out of concrete.

Solitary confinement is rock bottom, it's absolute unfreedom.

Let me repeat: the principle mark of genius is not perfection, but originality, the opening of new frontiers; once this is done, the conquered territory becomes common property.

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.

At each step biochemical triggers and feedbacks determine which of the alternative developmental pathways among several possibles a group of cells will actually follow.

The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood. He who will be proved right in the end appears to be wrong and harmful before it.

Hierarchies are 'dissectible' into their constituent branches, on which the holons form the 'nodes'. The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises is called its 'depth', and the number of holons on any given level its 'span'.

It is obvious', says Hadamard, 'that invention or discovery, be it in mathematics or anywhere else, takes place by combining ideas....The Latin verb cogito for to think etymologically means to shake together. St. Augustine had already noticed that and also observed that intelligo means to select among.

I have no illusions about the prospects of the theory I am proposing: it will suffer the inevitable fate of being proven wrong in many, or most, details, by new advances in psychology and neurology. What I am hoping for is that it will be found to contain a shadowy pattern of truth, and that it may stimulate those who search for unity in the diverse manifestations of human thought and emotion.

Could some similar paradox be responsible for the crisis in modern physics - some unconscious blockage which prevents us from seeing the 'obvious', and compels us to persist in our own version of wavemechanical double-think?

But the history of science teaches that most discoveries were made by several people independently from each other, at more or less the same time; and this fact alone (apart from all other considerations) is sufficient to show that when the time is ripe for a given type of invention or discovery, the favourable chance event which sparks it off is bound to occur sooner or later.

We resembled the great Inquisitors in that we persecuted the seeds of evil not only in men's deeds, but in their thoughts. We admitted no private sphere, not even inside a man's skull. We lived under the compulsion of working things out to their final conclusions.