Quotes from Arthur Koestler

Discovery often means simply the uncovering of something which has always been there but was hidden from the eye by the blinkers of habit.

Immersion in the group mind is a kind of poor man's self-transcendence.

The revolutions of thought which shape the basic outlook of an age are not disseminated through text-books - they spread like epidemics, through contamination by invisible agents and innocent germ carriers, by the most varied form of contact, or simply by breathing the common air.

The chain, thus unified, now reached from God's throne down to the meanest worm.

I merely wish to point out that some of the major break-throughs in the history of science represent such dramatic tours de force, that 'ripeness' seems a very lame explanation, and 'chance' no explanation at all. Einstein discovered the principle of relativity 'unaided by any observation that had not been available for at least fifty years before'; the plum was overripe, yet for half a century nobody came to pluck it.

The integrative powers of life are manifested in the phenomena of symbiosis between organelles, in the varied forms of partnership within the same species or between different species; in the phenomena of regeneration, in lower species, of complete individuals from their fragments; in the re-formation of scrambled embryonic organs, etc. The self-assertive tendency is equally ubiquitous in the competitive struggle for life.

Humour is the only domain of creative activity where a stimulus on a high level of complexity produces a massive and sharply defined response on the level of physiological reflexes.

In fact, the animal does not merely adapt to the environment, but constantly adapts the environment to itself. It eats environment, drinks environment, fights and mates environment, burrows and builds in the environment; and even in observing environment, it modifies, dismantles, analyses, and reassembles it after its own fashion, converting 'noise' into 'information'. 'Perception', Woodworth wrote, 'is always driven by a direct, inherent motive which might be called the will to perceive.

The moment attention is focused on a normally automatized part-function such as ennunciating consonants, the matrix breaks down, the needle gets stuck, and the performance is paralyzed-like the centipede who was asked in which order he moved his hundred legs, and could walk no more.

The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flashes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The dive vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.

Habit and originality, then, point in opposite directions in the two-way traffic between conscious and unconscious processes. The condensation of learning into habit, and the automatisation of skills constitute the downward stream; while the upward traffic consists in the minor vitalising pulses from the underground, and the rare major surges of creation.

even a cursory glance at history", wrote Arthur Koestler, "should convince one that individual crimes committed for selfish motives play a quite insignificant part in the human tragedy, compared to the numbers massacred in unselfish loyalty to one's tribe, nation, dynasty, church, or political ideology. . .

All great works of literature contain variations and combinations, overt or implied, of such archetypal conflicts inherent in the condition of man, which first occur in the symbols of mythology, and are restated in the particular idiom of each culture and period.

Freedom of the will is a metaphysical question outside the scope of this book; but considered as a subjective datum of experience, 'free will' is the awareness of alternative choices.

The fact is: I no longer believe in my infallibility. That is why I am lost.

To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one's own conscience is to abandon mankind. History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience.

Truth is what is useful to humanity, falsehood what is harmful.

And yet if it be sometimes necessary to conceal facts with words, then it should be done in such manner that it shall not appear; or should it be observed, then a defense should be promptly ready. Niccolò Machiavelli, "Confidential Instructions" to Raffaello Girolami (trans. C. Detmold) But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. Matthew 5:37 1.

Every decision is like a murder, and our march forward is over the stillborn bodies of all our possible selves that will never be.

The humorist has solved his problem by joining two incompatible matrices together in a paradoxical synthesis. His audience, on the other hand, has its expectations shattered and its reason affronted by the impact of the second matrix on the first; instead of fusion there is collision; and in the mental disarray which ensues, emotion, deserted by reason, is flushed out in laughter.

The distinction between true and false applies to ideas, not to emotions; an emotion can be cheap, but never untrue.

The creative act of the humorist consisted in bringing about a momentary fusion between two habitually incompatible matrices. Scientific discovery, as we shall presently see, can be described in very similar terms-as the permanent fusion of matrices of thought previously believed to be incompatible.

Hay dos clases de valentía: la del valiente y la del cobarde

But the revival of a dynamic psychology which reinstated the academic respectability of such terms as curiosity, exploratory drive, purpose, only came about when experimental evidence showed that even in the rat the urge to explore may prevail over hunger and fear.