"The greatest temptation for the like of us……" — Arthur Koestler
"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 one’s own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears…."
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Arthur Koestler
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110 Quotes by Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler has 110 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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...the crimes of violence committed for selfish, personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majorem gloriam Dei,…
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There is only one prospect worse than being chained to an intolerable existence: The nightmare of a botched attempt to…
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Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition. Let Othello subject Desdemona to a lie-detector test; his…
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If the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to…
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The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.
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In creating the human brain, evolution has wildly overshot the mark.
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As modern physics started with the Newtonian revolution, so modern philosophy starts with what one might call the Cartesian Catastrophe.…
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The real achievement in discoveries ... is seeing an analogy where no one saw one before. .. The essence of…
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The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution…
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In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic…
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When a chess player looks at the board, he does not see a static mosaic, a 'still life', but a…
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No writer or teacher or artist can escape the responsibility of influencing others whether he intends to or not, whether…
See all 110 quotes by Arthur Koestler »
More Accursed Quotes
This quote is filed under Accursed Quotes,
one of 44 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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May the same Almighty Goodness banish the accursed monster, war, from all lands, with her hated associates, rapine and insatiable…
— Daniel Boone
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Holy shadows of the dead, I'm not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which…
— Alexander the Great
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'It's this accursed Science,' I cried. 'It's the very Devil. The mediaeval priests and persecutors were right, and the Moderns…
— George Herbert
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I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life…
— George Bernard Shaw
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Comrades, just as the earth, after a long drought, pants for rain, so the workers of the world pant for…
— Grigory Zinoviev
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Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this…
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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And if there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms,…
— Antonin Artaud
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An intellectual hatred is the worst, So let her think opinions are accursed. Have I not seen the loveliest woman…
— William Butler Yeats
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You have delivered up our holy German Fatherland to one of the greatest demagogues of all time. I solemnly prophesy…
— Erich Ludendorff
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Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance…
— Simone Weil
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As thou these ashes, little brook, wilt bear Into the Avon, Avon to the tide Of Severn, Severn to the…
— William Wordsworth
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We had discovered an accursed country. We had found the Home of the Blizzard.
— Douglas Mawson
See all 44 Accursed Quotes »
