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Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky.

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
Science
Reality
Gogh
Einstein
Vans
Closer
Sky
Technology
Space

More quotes by Arthur Koestler

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In creating the human brain, evolution has wildly overshot the mark.
Arthur Koestler
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Woe unto the defeated, whom history treads into the dust.
Arthur Koestler
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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.
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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in the course of the last century science has become so dizzy with its successes, that it has forgotten to ask the pertinent questions- or refused to ask them under the pretext that they are meaningless, and in any case not the scientists concern.
Arthur Koestler
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The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan.
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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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.
Arthur Koestler
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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.
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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When a person identifies himself with a group his critical faculties are diminished and his passions enhanced by a kind of emotive resonance. The individual is not a killer, the group is, and by identifying with it, the individual becomes one. This is the infernal dialect reflected in man's history.
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
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Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.
Arthur Koestler
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The disastrous history of our species indicates the futility of all attempts at a diagnosis which do not take into account the possibility that homo sapiens is a victim of one of evolution's countless mistakes.
Arthur Koestler
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Among all forms of mentation, verbal thinking is the most articulate, the most complex, and the most vulnerable to infectious diseases. It is liable to absorb whispered suggestions, and to incorporate them as hidden persuaders into the code.
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 jester is brother to the sage.
Arthur Koestler
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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.
Arthur Koestler
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The thing represented had to pass through two distorting lenses: the artist's mind, and his medium of expression, before it emerged as a man-made dream - the two, of course, being intimately connected and interacting with each other.
Arthur Koestler
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History is a priori amoral it has no conscience.
Arthur Koestler