Chains Quote 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

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

— 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…

— Arthur Koestler

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

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

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

— Arthur Koestler

“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

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

— Arthur Koestler

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

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

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

The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood. He who will be proved right in the end appears to be wrong and harmful before…

— Arthur Koestler