Quotes by Arthur Koestler

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Picking up a new habit is easy, but breaking an old habit is a heroic achievement.

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The pulse of history beats slowly; man measures the passage of time in years, history in generations.

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Common sense (...) in itself may be a bad compass, which, if the boatman relies on it alone, will lure him into such winding paths that the goal will eventually be lost in the fog.

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The ultimate truth, until it is proven, always feels like a lie.

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History (...) knows no reservations and hesitation. He moves towards his ultimate goal with unwavering and unerring certainty. And in every bend of its bed, it deposits the washed mud and the corpses of those drowned in the current on its banks... History never goes astray. And he never makes a mistake.

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History is more bird gut divination than real science.

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I no longer believe in my infallibility. That's why I'm a lost man.

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Faith is a wonderful thing; not only can he move mountains, but he can even convince you that a herring is a racehorse.

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History has also taught us that lies often serve a cause better than the truth. For man lingers and always wanders in the desert for forty years before he takes the next step on the path of his development. You can only be led out of the wilderness with threats and promises, and in the meantime you have to yell at them with imaginary dangers and, if not, promise them with imaginary rewards; and do not rest half way, and, deviating from the true path, worship the golden calf prostrate.

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The world has come to a point where wisdom and decency are opposed to each other, and whoever chooses one must renounce the other. It doesn't lead to anything good if someone worries so much. Because it is written that "But let your speech be, thus, thus; no, no; above this something falls, it is from the evil one." (...) That's how it is; one is either smart or honest; the two don't go together.

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The confirmation of a discovery, the proof of the correctness of a realization always follows after the big moment; the creative act itself is a leap into the darkness for both the scientist and the artist, where both are guided by their own intuitions, which are not infallible in the least.

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The tragedy of man lies not in his savagery and cruelty, but in his susceptibility to delusions, illusions and delusions.

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Evolution can also be understood as a labyrinth of blind alleys and dead ends, and it is by no means impossible to assume that in man's inherent baggage - although its content is incomparably more colorful and richer than that of all other creatures - there are certain errors and mistakes that act in the direction of self-destruction and self-destruction. too.

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If the essence of learning and knowledge is that one constructs one's own private model of the universe, then this model cannot in any way contain one's own perfect model, because the latter is always one step behind the process that the assumption represents according to

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Man cannot start from a vacuum; a new idea can only be outlined in relation to an existing reference environment.

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Creativity is a learning process in which the teacher and the student are the same person.

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All great inventions, all great works are the result of freeing thoughts and actions from the tyranny of routine.