305 Quotes by Arthur Koestler

Indeed, the ideal for a well-functioning democratic state is like the ideal for a gentleman's well-cut suit it is not noticed. For the common people of Britain, Gestapo and concentration camps have approximately the same degree of reality as the monster of Loch Ness. Atrocity propaganda is helpless against this healthy lack of imagination .

The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.

The 'missing link' between ape and man will probably never be found- because it was an embryo.

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

Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky . The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrant nude differs from a nude by Manet.

Prometheus is reaching out for the stars with an empty grin on his face.

The thing represented had to pass through two distorting lenses: the artist's mind, and his medium of expression, before it emerged as a man-made dream - the two, of course, being intimately connected and interacting with each other.

Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.

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.