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
science reality technology
Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky.
plato real ideas
When reality becomes unbearable, the mind must withdraw from it and create a world of artificial perfection. Plato's world of pure Ideas and Forms, which alone is to be considered as real, whereas the world of nature which we perceive is merely its cheap Woolworth copy, is a flight into delusion.
art biological civilization create criterion defined degree elaborate evolution functional harmony internal needed pattern process relations social species structure sum total ultimate value whether
The process of evolution may be described as differentiation of structure and integration of function. The more differentiated and specialized the parts, the more elaborate co-ordination is needed to create a well-balanced whole. The ultimate criterion of the value of a functional whole is the degree of its internal harmony or integratedness, whether the functional whole is a biological species or a civilization or an individual. A whole is defined by the pattern of relations between its parts, not by the sum of its parts; and a civilization is not defined by the sum of its science, technology, art and social organization, but by the total pattern which they form, and the degree of harmonious integration in that pattern.
believe facts lost
The fact is: I no longer believe in my own infallibility. That is why I am lost.
spring cities rivers
I went to Communism as one goes to a spring of fresh water, and I left Communism as one clambers out of a poisoned river strewn with the wreckage of flooded cities and the corpses of the drowned.
scientist eternity peeping
Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.
wisdom blessed power
Nobody before the Pythagorean had thought that mathematical relations held the secret of the universe. Twenty-five centuries later, Europe is still blessed and cursed with their heritage. To non-European civilizations, the idea that numbers are the key to both wisdom and power, seems never to have occurred.
book grace rare-moments
In my youth I regarded the universe as an open book, printed in the language of equations, whereas now it appears to me as a text written in invisible ink, of which in our rare moments of grace we are able to decipher a small segment.
art creative perception
Every creative act involves a new innocence or perception, liberated from the cataract of accepted belief.
brother sage jester
The jester is brother to the sage.
men shadow dying
Most of us were not afraid of death, only of the act of dying; and there were times when we overcame even this fear. At such moments we were free-men without shadows, dismissed from the ranks of the mortal; it was the most complete experience of freedom that can be granted a man.
loyalty war self
War is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcending identification. Without loyalty to tribe, church, flag or ideal, there would be no wars.
two half half-truth
Two half truths do not make a truth.
unique men self
No man is an island- he is a holon. A Janus-faced entity who, looking inward, sees himself as a self-contained unique whole, looking outward as a dependent part. His self-assertive tendency is the dynamic manifestation of his unique wholeness, his autonomy and independence as a holon. Its equally universal antagonist, the integrative tendency, expresses his dependence on the larger whole to which he belongs: his 'part-ness.'.