Of all forms of mental activity, the most difficult to induce even in the minds of the young, who may be presumed not to have lost their flexibility, is the art of handling the same bundle of data as before,… — Arthur Koestler Copy Share Image
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… — Arthur Koestler Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. — Arthur Koestler Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards. — Arthur Koestler Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which — Arthur Koestler Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he… — Arthur Koestler Copy Share Image
