305 Quotes by Arthur Koestler

The feeling of fraternal warmth towards fellow beings handicapped by their social background became transformed into a self-degrading worship of the primitive, the uncouth, the humorless; of the blockheaded “class-conscious” proletarian – the cult of the lowest common denominator.

There is a strangely consistent parallel between Copernicus’ character, and the humble, devious manner in which the Copernican revolution entered through the back door of history, preceded by the apologetic remark: ‘Please don’t take seriously – it is all meant in fun, for mathematicians only, and highly improbable indeed.

The comic effect of the satire is derived from the simultaneous presence, in the reader’s mind, of the social reality with which he is familiar, and of its reflections in the distorting mirror of the satirist. It focuses attention on abuses and deformities in society of which, blunted by habit, we were no longer aware; it makes us suddenly discover the absurdity of the familiar and the familiarity of the absurd.

Theoretical physics is no longer concerned with things, but with the mathematical relations between abstractions which are the residue of the vanished things.

I have coined the term ‘bisociation’ in order to make a distinction between the routine skills of thinking on a single ‘plane’, as it were, and the creative act, which, as I shall try to show, always operates on more than one plane. The former may be called single-minded, the latter a double-minded, transitory state of unstable equilibrium where the balance of both emotion and thought is disturbed.

He found out that those processes wrongly known as “monologues” are really dialogues of a special kind; dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other against all grammatical rules, addresses him as “I” instead of “you”, in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions; but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observation and even refuses to be localized in time and space.

Show us not the aim without the way. For ends and means on earth are so entangled That changing one, you change the other too; Each different path brings other ends in view.

To quote Dr. Ewer: ‘Behaviour will tend to be always a jump ahead of structure and so play a decisive role in the evolutionary process.’ In this light, evolution no longer appears as a tale told by an idiot, but rather as an epic recited by a stutterer-at times haltingly and painfully, then precipitating in bursts.

Newcomers from Paris transmitted to us Goebbels’ ironic congratulations on our cordial reception in the Land of Freedom. Voelkischer Beobachter, the official Nazi organ, published a list of anti-Nazi authors interned in France, asking them whether they still clung to the blessings of democracy. It was cheap irony, but it cut to the quick; it hurt and stung and burnt.