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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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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
Flow
Mud
Courses
Corpses
Course
Bend
Goal
Flows
Unerring
History
Carries
Inert
Every
Carrie
Scruples
Leaves
Drowned
Towards
Hesitation

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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 self-assertive tendency is the dynamic expression of the holon's wholeness, the integrative tendency, the dynamic expression of its partness.
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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.
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Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one's own nervous system.
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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.
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History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unnering flows towards her goal. History knows herway. She makes no mistakes.
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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.
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The new frontiers to be conquered are mainly in the convolutions of the cortex.
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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.
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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.
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One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.
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Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition. Let Othello subject Desdemona to a lie-detector test his jealousy will still blind him to the evidence. Let Oedipus triumph over gravity he won't triumph over his fate.
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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.
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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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The discoveries of yesterday are the truisms of tomorrow, because we can add to our knowledge but cannot subtract from it.
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The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition.
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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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In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot.
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Faith is a wondrous thing it is not only capable of moving mountains, but also of making you believe that a herring is a race horse.
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Newton's apple and Cezanne's apple are discoveries more closely related than they seem.
Arthur Koestler