Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler, CBEwas a Hungarian-British author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931 Koestler joined the Communist Party of Germany until, disillusioned by Stalinism, he resigned in 1938. In 1940 he published his novel Darkness at Noon, an anti-totalitarian work that gained him international fame. Over the next 43 years, from his residence in Britain, Koestler espoused many political causes, and wrote novels, memoirs, biographies and numerous...
NationalityHungarian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth5 September 1905
History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unnering flows towards her goal. History knows herway. She makes no mistakes.
in the course of the last century science has become so dizzy with its successes, that it has forgotten to ask the pertinent questions- or refused to ask them under the pretext that they are meaningless, and in any case not the scientists concern.
Some tribes [of monkeys] have taken to washing potatoes in the river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating groups of potato-washers meet non-washers, and the two groups watch each other's strange behavior with apparent bewilderment. But unlike the inhabitants of Lilliput, who fought holy crusades over the question at which end to break the egg, the potato-washing monkeys do not go to war with the non-washers, because the poor creatures have no language which would enable them to declare washing a diving commandment and eating unwashed potatoes a deadly heresy.
History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience.
One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.
In any language it is a struggle to make a sentence say exactly what you mean.
The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use.
The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.
The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.
The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.
To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one s own conscience is to abandon mankind.
To want to meet an author because you like his books is as ridiculous as wanting to meet the goose because you like pate de foie gras.
The ultimate truth is penultimately a falsehood.