Arthur Koestler

If conquerors be regarded as the engine-drivers of History, then the conquerors of thought are perhaps the pointsmen who, less conspicuous to the traveler's eye, determine the direction of the journey.

— Arthur Koestler

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

— Arthur Koestler

True creativity often starts where language ends.

— Arthur Koestler

The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.

— Arthur Koestler

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

— Arthur Koestler

Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.

— Arthur Koestler

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

— Arthur Koestler

Nobody before the Pythagorean had thought that mathematical relations held the secret of the universe. Twenty-five centuries later, Europe is still blessed and cursed with their heritage. To non-European civilizations, the idea that numbers are the key to both wisdom and power, seems never to have occurred.

— Arthur Koestler

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

— Arthur Koestler

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

If the creator had a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely meant us to stick it out.

— Arthur Koestler

Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.

— Arthur Koestler

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

— Arthur Koestler

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

The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.

— Arthur Koestler

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

Indeed, the ideal for a well-functioning democratic state is like the ideal for a gentleman’s well-cut suit—it is not noticed.

— Arthur Koestler