The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.
Arthur KoestlerSnobbery is not merely a silly human weakness but something basic in the mentality of modern man-a symptom which reflects the general sickness, the dislocation of social and cultural values in contemporary civilization.
Arthur KoestlerThe 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.
Arthur KoestlerPolitics 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 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 KoestlerI have repeatedly stressed that the selfish impulses of man constitute a much less historic danger than his integrative tendencies. To put it in the simplest way: the individual who indulges in an excess of aggressive self-assertiveness incurs the penalties of society-he outlaws himself, he contracts out of the hierarchy. The true believer, on the other hand, becomes more closely knit into it; he enters the womb of his church, or party, or whatever the social holon to which he surrenders his identity.
Arthur Koestler