27 Quotes by Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler was a Hungarian-British author and journalist who lived from 1905 to 1983. He is best known for his novel “Darkness at Noon,” which is a fictionalized account of the Stalinist purges in the Soviet Union. Koestler was also a prominent journalist and wrote for newspapers such as The Times and The New York Times. He was a controversial figure and was often at odds with the political establishment of his time. Koestler’s work continues to be studied and debated today, and he is considered an important figure in 20th-century literature and political thought. (Bio)
Arthur Koestler Quotes
Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears. (Meaning)
One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.
The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
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.
Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion. (Meaning)
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.
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
In any language it is a struggle to make a sentence say exactly what you mean.
If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.
Brain-washing starts in the cradle.
Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality.
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.
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.
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.
True creativity often starts where language ends.
The most persistent sound which reverberates through man’s history is the beating of war drums.
One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions.
…the crimes of violence committed for selfish, personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majorem gloriam Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to the flag, a leader, a religeous faith or political conviction.
The creative act does not create something out of nothing; it uncovers, selects, reshuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, ideas, faculties, and skills.
The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.
Honor is decency without vanity.
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.
Aggressiveness is not the main trouble with the human species, but rather an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.
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.
When reality becomes unbearable, the mind must withdraw from it and create a world of artificial perfection. Plato’s world of pure Ideas and Forms, which alone is to be considered as real, whereas the world of nature which we perceive is merely its cheap Woolworth copy, is a flight into delusion.
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.
Two half truths do not make a truth.
― Arthur Koestler Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an impact-driven creator at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 life goals around the globe. Tal's journey and recent book, The Art of Fully Living, inspired him to found Elevate Society.
