Quotes by Arthur Koestler

“Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion”

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

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

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

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

“If the creator had a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely meant us to stick it out”

“Two half-truths do not make a truth, and two half-cultures do not make a culture.”

“Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.”

The old disease, thought Rubashov. Revolutionaries should not think through other peoples minds. Or, perhaps they should? Or even ought to? How can one change the world if one identifies oneself with everybody? How else can one change it? He who understands and forgives -- where would he find a motive to act? Where would he not?

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

It was quiet in the cell. Rubashov heard only the creaking of his steps on the tiles. Six and a half steps to the door, whence they must come to fetch him, six and a half steps to the window, behind which night was falling. Soon it would be over. But when he asked himself, For what actually are you dying? he found no answer.It was a mistake in the system; perhaps it lay in the precept which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed: in the precept, that the end justifies the means. It was this sentence which had killed the great fraternity of the Revolution and made them run amuck. What had he once written in his diary? We have thrown overboard all conventions, our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logic; we are sailing without ethical ballast.

Ivanov- Up to now , all revolutions have been made by moralizing diletantes. They were always in good faith and perished because of their dilettantism. We for the first time are consequent...Yes, said Rubashov. So consequent, that in the interests of a just distribution of land we deliberately let die of starvation about five million farmers and their families in one year. So consequent were we in the liberation of human beings from the shackles of industrial exploitation that we sent about ten million people to do forced labour in the Artic regions and the jungles of the East, under conditions similar to those of antique galley slaves. So consequent that, to settle a difference of opinion, we know only one argument: death, whether it is a matter of submarines, manure, or the Party line to be followed in Indo-China. ...

Each wrong idea we follow is a crime committed against future generations.

History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unnering flows towards her goal. History knows herway. She makes no mistakes.

Much depends on asking the right question at the right time.

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.

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

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

Aberrations of the human mind are to a large extent due to the obsessional pursuit of some part-truth, treated as if it were a whole truth.

... on the historical scale, the damages wrought by individual violence for selfish motives are insignificant compared to the holocausts resulting from self-transcending devotion to collectively shared belief-systems. It is derived from primitive identification instead of mature social integration; it entails the partial surrender of personal responsibility and produces the quasi-hypnotic phenomena of group-psychology.