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Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over.

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
Men
Weapons
Susceptible
Disease
Slogans
Groups
Diseases
Takes
Weapon
Hypnotized
Words
Fought
Deadliest
Language
Territory
Infectious
War
Wars
Epidemic
Mind
Group
Epidemics

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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.
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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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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.
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The 'missing link' between ape and man will probably never be found- because it was an embryo.
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Adolescence is a kind of emotional seasickness. Both are funny, but only in retrospect.
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In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection -quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection tautology.
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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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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.
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In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot.
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One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.
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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.
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The real achievement in discoveries... is seeing an analogy where no one saw one before... The essence of discovery is that unlikely marriage of cabbages and kings — of previously unrelated frames of reference or universes of discourse — whose union will solve the previously insoluble problem.
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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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Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky.
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one of the tests of a theory is that, once grasped, it appears self-evident.
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Brain-washing starts in the cradle.
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A publisher who writes is like a cow in a milk bar.
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The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.
Arthur Koestler