Arthur Koestler Quotes

• Creativity in science could be described as the act of putting two and two together to make five.

  Arthur Koestler

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The most persistent sound that reverberates through men’s history is the beating of war drums.

  Arthur Koestler

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeleton of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life.

  Arthur Koestler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Science

• Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.

  Arthur Koestler

  Topics in Death, Dream, Friendship

  Tags in Illusion, Aspiration

• 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

  Topics in History, Politics

  Tags in Breathing, Fair, Justifies, Possible

• Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

  Arthur Koestler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Learning, Creativity

• Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

  Arthur Koestler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Learning, Teacher, Creativity

• A publisher who writes is like a cow in a milk bar.

  Arthur Koestler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Milk, Cow

• Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.

  Arthur Koestler

  Topics in Influence

  Tags in Courage

• Prometheus is reaching out for the stars with an empty grin on his face.

  Arthur Koestler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Space, Grin, Prometheus, Empty, Stars, Reaching

• Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.

  Arthur Koestler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Eternity, Scientists, Keyhole, School

• One may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical br*thel for emotions.

  Arthur Koestler

  Topics in Emotion

  Tags in Metaphysical, World

• A writer’s ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years’ time and for one reader in a hundred years’ time.

  Arthur Koestler

  Topics in Ambition

  Tags in Readers

• The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million.

  Arthur Koestler

  Tags in Individuality, Multitude

• The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.

  Arthur Koestler

  Tags in Discovery, Originality

• True creativity often starts where language ends.

  Arthur Koestler

• The principle mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.

  Arthur Koestler

• The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.

  Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler (21)

Birth:	5th September, 1905
Death:	1st March, 1983
Nationality:	British, Hungarian
Profession:	Essayist, Journalist, Novelist

About

Arthur Koestler was born in Budapest. He was a Hungarian-British author and journalist.  In 1931 Koestler joined the Communist Party of Germany until, disillusioned by Stalinism, he resigned in 1938. In 1940 he published his novel Darkness at Noon, an anti-totalitarian work, which gained him international fame. Over the next 43 years from his residence in Great Britain, Koestler espoused many political causes and wrote novels, memoirs, biographies, and numerous essays. In 1968, he was awarded the Sonning Prize "for outstanding contribution to European culture" and, in 1972, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Related Authors

• Kathy Acker
• Yoshida Kenko
• Anna Letitia Barbauld
• Thomas De Quincey
• James Hogg
• Hu Shih
• Adrienne Rich
• Isaac Asimov
• Jorge Luis Borges
• George Steiner

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 28th April

Births

• 1948 - Terry Pratchett
• 1878 - Lionel Barrymore
• 1939 - Mort Kondracke
• 1970 - Bridget Moynahan
• 1908 - Oskar Schindler

Deaths

• 1978 - Mohammed Daud Khan
• 1813 - Mikhail Kutuzov
• 2005 - Percy Heath
• 1954 - Leon Jouhaux
• 1923 - Knute Nelson