The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton and Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with oneโs own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your earsโฆ.
Arthur KoestlerThe 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.
Arthur KoestlerHabit is the denial of creativity and the negation of freedom; a self-imposed straitjacket of which the wearer is unaware.
Arthur Koestler...the temptation, which consisted of a single word written on the cemetary of the defeated: Sleep.
Arthur KoestlerIf the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to stick it out.
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