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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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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
Sure
Whether
Perishes
Existed
Ethical
Absolutes
Ethics
Exist
Civilization

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Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky.
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A writer's ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years' time and for one reader in a hundred years' time.
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We cannot unthink unless we are insane.
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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.
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The jester is brother to the sage.
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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.
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I believe that the evidence for telepathy is overwhelming and that it is a part of reality that is above science. Science allows us to glimpse [only] fragments of reality.
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If the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to stick it out.
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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.
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...the crimes of violence committed for selfish, personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majorem gloriam Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to the flag, a leader, a religeous faith or political conviction.
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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.
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The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.
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The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan.
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one of the tests of a theory is that, once grasped, it appears self-evident.
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Honor is decency without vanity.
Arthur Koestler
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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.
Arthur Koestler
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Brain-washing starts in the cradle.
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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.
Arthur Koestler
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A publisher who writes is like a cow in a milk bar.
Arthur Koestler
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Newton's apple and Cezanne's apple are discoveries more closely related than they seem.
Arthur Koestler