Arthur Koestler Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Arthur Koestler

  Courage, Business, Thought Provoking

  Arthur Koestler (1952). “Arrow in the blue: an autobiography”

  68 Copy quote

• The evils of mankind are caused, not by the primary aggressiveness of individuals, but by their self-transcending identification with groups whose common denominator is low intelligence and high emotionality.

  Arthur Koestler

  Self, Evil, Groups

  31 Copy quote

• The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.

  Arthur Koestler

  Carpe Diem, Perfection, Principles

  Arthur Koestler (1964). “The Act of Creation”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  32 Copy quote

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

  Arthur Koestler

  Believe, Writing, Shut Up

  33 Copy quote

• The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation.We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.

  Arthur Koestler

  Men, Self, Church

  24 Copy quote

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

  Arthur Koestler

  Inspirational, Encouraging, Struggle

  18 Copy quote

• The creative act does not create something out of nothing; it uncovers, selects, reshuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, ideas, faculties, and skills.

  Arthur Koestler

  Skills, Ideas, Creative

  6 Copy quote

• I went to Communism as one goes to a spring of fresh water, and I left Communism as one clambers out of a poisoned river strewn with the wreckage of flooded cities and the corpses of the drowned.

  Arthur Koestler

  Spring, Cities, Rivers

  Arthur Koestler (1952). “Arrow in the blue: an autobiography”

  10 Copy quote

• The jester is brother to the sage.

  Arthur Koestler

  Brother, Sage, Jester

  57 Copy quote

• Brain-washing starts in the cradle.

  Arthur Koestler

  Brain, Cradle, Washing

  Arthur Koestler (1981). “Kaleidoscope: essays from Drinkers of infinity, and The heel of Achilles and later pieces and stories”, Vintage

  15 Copy quote

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

  Arthur Koestler

  Inspiring, Teacher, Educational

  20 Copy quote

• Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality.

  Arthur Koestler

  Creativity, Originality, Defeat

  Arthur Koestler, Harold Harris (1975). “Astride the two cultures: Arthur Koestler at 70”, Not Avail

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Arthur Koestler

  Men, Brain, Needs

  "The Ghost in the Machine". Book by Arthur Koestler, 1967.

  11 Copy quote

• Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.

  Arthur Koestler

  Motivational, Sad, Death

  26 Copy quote

• Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself. Boredom sets into boring minds. The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.

  Arthur Koestler

  Mistake, Discovery, Long

  3 Copy quote

• Honor is decency without vanity.

  Arthur Koestler

  Vanity, Honor, Decency

  5 Copy quote

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

  Arthur Koestler

  Inspirational, Education, Business

  Arthur Koestler (1964). “The Act of Creation”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  12 Copy quote

• Modern man lives isolated in his artificial environment, not because the artificial is evil as such, but because of his lack of comprehension of the forces which make it work- of the principles which relate his gadgets to the forces of nature, to the universal order. It is not central heating which makes his existence 'unnatural,' but his refusal to take an interest in the principles behind it. By being entirely dependent on science, yet closing his mind to it, he leads the life of an urban barbarian.

  Arthur Koestler

  Men, Order, Evil

  Arthur Koestler (1969). “The Act of Creation”

  9 Copy quote

• Two half truths do not make a truth.

  Arthur Koestler

  Two, Half, Half Truth

  3 Copy quote

• The real achievement in discoveries... is seeing an analogy where no one saw one before... The essence of discovery is that unlikely marriage of cabbages and kings — of previously unrelated frames of reference or universes of discourse — whose union will solve the previously insoluble problem.

  Arthur Koestler

  Real, Science, Discovery

  "The Act of Creation".

  21 Copy quote

• If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of his 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. Murder within the species on an individual or collective scale is a phenomenon unknown in the whole animal kingdom, except for man, and a few varieties of ants and rats.

  Arthur Koestler

  Eye, Men, Animal

  4 Copy quote

• When a chess player looks at the board, he does not see a static mosaic, a 'still life', but a magnetic field of forces, charged with energy - as Faraday saw the stresses surrounding magnets and currents as curves in space; or as Van Gogh saw vortices in the skies of Provence.

  Arthur Koestler

  Stress, Player, Curves

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Arthur Koestler

  Art, Creative, Perception

  "The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe".

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Arthur Koestler

  War, Men, Epidemics

  5 Copy quote

• The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes, 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 diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.

  Arthur Koestler

  Giving, Intuition, Links

  Arthur Koestler (1969). “The Act of Creation”

  24 Copy quote

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