Philosophy Quotes by Arthur Koestler

8 Philosophy quotes by Arthur Koestler

All Philosophy quotes Arthur Koestler’s page

Koestler’s critical eye on ideology and creativity appears in eight succinct quotes that still feel relevant today.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

As modern physics started with the Newtonian revolution, so modern philosophy starts with what one might call the Cartesian Catastrophe. The catastrophe…

Arthur Koestler

Image

“I don't approve of mixing ideologies," Ivanov continued. "There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles.…

Arthur Koestler

Image

In the social equation, the value of a single life is nil; in the cosmic equation, it is infinite... Not only communism,…

Arthur Koestler

Image

I profoundly admire Aldous Huxley, both for his philosophy and uncompromising sincerity. But I disagree with his advocacy of 'the chemical opening…

Arthur Koestler

Image

All "if" statements about the past are as dubious as prophecies of the future are. It seems fairly plausible that if Alexander…

Arthur Koestler

Image

It is impossible to decide whether a particular detail of the Pythagorean universe was the work of the master, or filled in…

Arthur Koestler

Image

“that man is a reality, mankind an abstraction; that men cannot be treated as units in operations of political arithmetic because they…

Arthur Koestler

Image

The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only rule of political ethics; anything else is just a…

Arthur Koestler

Image

Other authors on Philosophy

More by Arthur Koestler

The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into…

Arthur Koestler

Image

The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan.

Arthur Koestler

Image

The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most revolutionaries fell before this…

Arthur Koestler

Image

The revolutions of thought which shape the basic outlook of an age are not disseminated through text-books- they spread like epidemics, through contamination by…

Arthur Koestler

Image

The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes,…

Arthur Koestler

Image

Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which - miraculously, it seems - merge into a significant event.

Arthur Koestler

Image

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

Arthur Koestler

Image

“Revolutionary theory had frozen to a dogmatic cult, with a simplified, easily graspable catechism, and with No. 1 as the high priest celebrating the Mass.”

Arthur Koestler

Image

Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which

Arthur Koestler

Image

The more backwoodish a social group, juvenile or adult, the stricter its conception of the normal, and the readier it will ridicule any departure…

Arthur Koestler

Image

As modern physics started with the Newtonian revolution, so modern philosophy starts with what one might call the Cartesian Catastrophe. The catastrophe consisted in…

Arthur Koestler