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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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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
Civilization
Sickness
Modern
Cultural
Values
Contemporary
Dislocation
Social
Silly
Snobbery
Human
Basic
Symptom
Humans
Merely
Reflects
Something
Weakness
Symptoms
Men
General
Mentality

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Wherever we find orderly, stable systems in Nature, we find that they are hierarchically structured, for the simple reason that without such structuring of complex systems into sub-assemblies, there could be no order and stability- except the order of a dead universe filled with a uniformly distributed gas.
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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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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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Woe unto the defeated, whom history treads into the dust.
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History had a slow pulse man counted in years, history in generations
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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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Without the hard little bits of marble which are called 'facts' or 'data' one cannot compose a mosaic what matters, however, are not so much the individual bits, but the successive patterns into which you arrange them, then break them up and rearrange them.
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In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot.
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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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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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Every creative act – in science, art, or religion – involves a regression to a more primitive level, a new innocence of perception liberated from the cataract of accepted beliefs.
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When all is said, its atmosphere [England's] still contains fewer germs of aggression and brutality per cubic foot in a crowded bus, pub or queue than in any other country in which I have lived
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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 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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The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan.
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Honor is decency without vanity.
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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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I am not sure whether ethical absolutes exist. But I am sure that we have to act as if they existed or civilization perishes.
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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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Brain-washing starts in the cradle.
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