305 Quotes by Arthur Koestler

The working of the central nervous system is a hierarchic affair in which functions at the higher levels do not deal directly with the ultimate structural units, such as neurons or motor units, but operate by activating lower patterns that have their own relatively autonomous structural unity.

El valor consiste en no permitir que tus temores influyan sobre tus actos.

For Pythagoras as for Kepler, the two kinds of contemplation were twins; for them philosophy and religion were motivated by the same longing : to catch glimpses of eternity through the window of time.

The curse of ‘spherism’ upon man’s vision of the universe lasted for two thousand years.

The distance between the library and the bedroom is astronomical.

This ‘ruthless’ determination of morphogenetic fields to assert their individuality reflects, in our terminology, the self-assertive principle in development.

The memoir did in fact get him a professorship at the Lycee in Lyon. It was called Considerations of the Mathematical Theory of Games of Chance, and demonstrated, among other things, the habitual gamblers are, in the long run, bound to lose.

The philosophy of nature evolved by occasional leaps and bounds alternating with delusional pursuits, culs-de-sac, regressions, periods of blindness, and amnesia. The great discoveries which determined its course were sometimes the unexpected by-products of a chase after quite different hares. At other times, the process of discovery consisted merely in the cleaning away of the rubbish that blocked the path, or in the rearranging of existing items of knowledge in a different pattern.

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.