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One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.

Arthur Koestler

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Arthur Koestler
Age: 77 †
Born: 1905
Born: September 5
Died: 1983
Died: March 1
Author
Autobiographer
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Writer
Buda Pest
Kösztler Artúr
Writing
Believe
Ruthlessly
Believes
Shut
Either
Write
Else
Truth

More quotes by Arthur Koestler

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Brain-washing starts in the cradle.
Arthur Koestler
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The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into the magic aura are not dealt with rationally but by a specific type of pseudo-reasoning. Absurdities and contradictions are made acceptable by specious rationalizations.
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No writer or teacher or artist can escape the responsibility of influencing others whether he intends to or not, whether he is conscious of it or not.
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History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unerring, she flows towards her goal. At every bend in her course she leaves the mud which she carries and the corpses of the drowned.
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Snobbery is not merely a silly human weakness but something basic in the mentality of modern man-a symptom which reflects the general sickness, the dislocation of social and cultural values in contemporary civilization.
Arthur Koestler
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I am not sure whether ethical absolutes exist. But I am sure that we have to act as if they existed or civilization perishes.
Arthur Koestler
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The Revolutionary's Utopia, which in appearance represents a complete break with the past, is always modeled on some image of the Lost Paradise, of a legendary Golden Age... All utopias are fed from the source of mythology the social engineers' blueprints are merely revised editions of the ancient text.
Arthur Koestler
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History is a priori amoral it has no conscience.
Arthur Koestler
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Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse.
Arthur Koestler
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The more backwoodish a social group, juvenile or adult, the stricter its conception of the normal, and the readier it will ridicule any departure from it.
Arthur Koestler
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One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions.
Arthur Koestler
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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.
Arthur Koestler
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The new frontiers to be conquered are mainly in the convolutions of the cortex.
Arthur Koestler
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The creativity and pathology of the human mind are, after all, two sides of the same medal coined in the evolutionary mint. The first is responsible for the splendour of our cathedrals, the second for the gargoyles that decorate them to remind us that the world is full of monsters, devils, and succubi.
Arthur Koestler
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Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky.
Arthur Koestler
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The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.
Arthur Koestler
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The evils of mankind are caused, not by the primary aggressiveness of individuals, but by their self-transcending identification with groups whose common denominator is low intelligence and high emotionality.
Arthur Koestler
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In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot.
Arthur Koestler
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When a chess player looks at the board, he does not see a static mosaic, a 'still life', but a magnetic field of forces, charged with energy - as Faraday saw the stresses surrounding magnets and currents as curves in space or as Van Gogh saw vortices in the skies of Provence.
Arthur Koestler
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The individual is not a killer, but the group is, and by identifying with it the individual is transformed into a killer.
Arthur Koestler