Quotes by Arthur Koestler

“The old disease, thought Rubashov. Revolutionaries should not think through other people's minds. Or, perhaps they should? Or even ought to? How can one change the world if one identifies oneself w...”

“Solitary confinement is rock bottom, its absolute unfreedom.”

“It was quiet in the cell. Rubashov heard only the creaking of his steps on the tiles. Six and a half steps to the door, whence they must come to fetch him, six and a half steps to the window, behin...”

“Ivanov- "Up to now , all revolutions have been made by moralizing diletantes. They were always in good faith and perished because of their dilettantism. We for the first time are consequent...""Yes...”

“Each wrong idea we follow is a crime committed against future generations.”

“The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.”

“Creative activity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.”

“History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unnering flows towards her goal. History knows herway. She makes no mistakes.”

“Much depends on asking the right question at the right time.”

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

“...The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the R...”

“Our Press and our schools cultivate Chauvinism, militarism, dogmatism, conformism and ignorance. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press,...”

“Aberrations of the human mind are to a large extent due to the obsessional pursuit of some part-truth, treated as if it were a whole truth.”

“... on the historical scale, the damages wrought by individual violence for selfish motives are insignificant compared to the holocausts resulting from self-transcending devotion to collectively sh...”

“Satan, on the contrary, is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic. He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathemati...”

“Rubashov had always believed that he knew himself rather well. Being without moral prejudices, he had no illusions about the phenomenon called the "first person singular" and had taken for granted,...”

“When one contemplates the streak of insanity running through human history, it appears highly probable that homo sapiens is a biological freak, the result of some remarkable mistake in the evolutio...”

“[My father] loved me tenderly and shyly from a distance, and later on took a naive pride in seeing my name in print.”

“For the movement was without scruples; she rolled towards her goal unconcernedly and deposed the corpses of the drowned in the windings of her course. Her course had many twists and windings; such ...”

“You opposed fascism, then you ditched communism.'No, I didnt. Communism ditched me by turning into Stalinism'.”