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 KoestlerCoincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which - miraculously, it seems - merge into a significant event.
Arthur KoestlerIf 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...the temptation, which consisted of a single word written on the cemetary of the defeated: Sleep.
Arthur KoestlerAdolescence is a kind of emotional seasickness. Both are funny, but only in retrospect.
Arthur KoestlerIf one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of his history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction. Murder within the species on an individual or collective scale is a phenomenon unknown in the whole animal kingdom, except for man, and a few varieties of ants and rats.
Arthur Koestler