Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Social
Ridicule
Conception
Adult
Adults
Group
Readier
Normal
Stricter
Groups
Juvenile
Society
Departure

More quotes by Arthur Koestler

Image
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.
Arthur Koestler
Image
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
Image
The jester is brother to the sage.
Arthur Koestler
Image
The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.
Arthur Koestler
Image
one of the tests of a theory is that, once grasped, it appears self-evident.
Arthur Koestler
Image
The progress of science, like an ancient desert trail, is strewn with the bleached skeletons of discarded theories, doctrines, and axioms which seemed to possess eternal life.
Arthur Koestler
Image
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.
Arthur Koestler
Image
Newton's apple and Cezanne's apple are discoveries more closely related than they seem.
Arthur Koestler
Image
The cell door slammed behind Rubishov.
Arthur Koestler
Image
...the temptation, which consisted of a single word written on the cemetary of the defeated: Sleep.
Arthur Koestler
Image
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.
Arthur Koestler
Image
The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition.
Arthur Koestler
Image
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.
Arthur Koestler
Image
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
Image
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
Image
the self-assertive tendency is the dynamic expression of the holon's wholeness, the integrative tendency, the dynamic expression of its partness.
Arthur Koestler
Image
The discoveries of yesterday are the truisms of tomorrow, because we can add to our knowledge but cannot subtract from it.
Arthur Koestler
Image
History is a priori amoral it has no conscience.
Arthur Koestler
Image
We cannot unthink unless we are insane.
Arthur Koestler
Image
Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky.
Arthur Koestler