|
dc702cf
|
The life we led was a proof of man's capacity for adaptation.I think that even the condemned souls in purgatory after time develop a sort of homely routine.That is ,by the way, why most prison memoirs are unreadable.The difficulty of conveying to the reader an idea of a nightmare world from which he has emerged makes the author depict the prisoner's state of mind as an uninterruped continuity of despair.He fears to appear frivolous or to sp..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
939d4aa
|
Entirely my own opinion," said Ivanov. "I am glad that we have reached the heart of the matter soon. In other words: you are convinced that "we" - that is to say, the Party, the State and the masses behind it - no longer represent the interests of the Revolution." "I should leave the masses out of it," said Rubashov. [...] "Leave the masses out of it, " he repeated. "You understand nothing about them. Nor, probably, do I any more. Once, whe..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
23b64ba
|
The deterioration of the intelligentsia is as much a symptom of disease as the corruption of the ruling class or the sleeping sickness of the proletariat.
|
|
intelligentsia
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
bef54ff
|
In my youth I regarded the Universe as an open book, printed in the language of physical equations, whereas now it appears to me as a text written in invisible ink, of which, in our rare moments of grace, we are able to decipher a small fragment.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
0b2140c
|
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 |
|
2e5e8c4
|
Wherever we find orderly, stable systems in Nature, we find that they are hierarchically structured, for the simple reason that without such structuring of complex systems into sub-assemblies, there could be no order and stability-except the order of a dead universr filled with a uniformly distributed gas.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
feab2ab
|
The pressure of the environment cramps art as it cramps behaviour. One may challenge this environment, but one has to pay for it, and the price is neurotic guilt. There never was an intelligentsia without a guilt complex; it is the income tax one has to pay for wanting to make others richer.
|
|
intelligentsia
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
c46c9ac
|
The ribosomes, for instance, which manufacture proteins, rival in complexity any chemical factory. The mitochondria are power plants which extract energy from food by a complicated chain of chemical reactions involving some fifty different steps: a single cell may have up to five thousand such power plants. Then there are the centrosomes, with their spindle apparatus, which organises the incredible choreography of the cell dividing into two..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
78b5502
|
The concept of internal selection, of a hierarchy of controls which eliminate the consequences of harmful gene-mutations and co-ordinates the effects of useful mutations, is the missing link in orthodoxy theory between the 'atoms' of heredity and the living stream of evolution. Without that link, neither of them makes sense. There can be no doubt that random mutations do occur: they can be observed in the laboratory. There can be no doubt t..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
ef81131
|
It was a mistake in the system; perhaps it lay in the precept which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed: in the precept, that the end justifies the means. . . . Perhaps later, much later, the new movement would arise--with new flags, a new spirit knowing of both: of economic fatality and the "oceanic sense." Perhaps the members of the new party will wear monks' c..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
866c980
|
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 with everybody? How else can one change it? He who understands and forgives -- where would he find a motive to act? Where would he not?
|
|
rebellion
motivation
revolution
russia
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
dd1ca4b
|
The metre of the poet, the metronome of the musician, the centimetre of the mathematician, are all derived from the same root, metron: measure, measurement.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
e1734f5
|
Our White - Whites were a mixed crowd,including a well - known doctor,owner of a chateau near Versailles,an opera singer with an enormous belly and a chaplainbass;a homosexual architect with a beard,two night club porters,and a lawyer who sold Jewish refugees visas for a Central American Republic,which on arrival turned out to be non valid.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
41b6060
|
With you, thought Rubashov and looked at the whitewashed wall behind which the other stood--in the meantime he had probably lit a cigarette and was blowing the smoke against the wall -- with you I have no accounts to settle. To you I owe no fare. Between you and us there is no common currency and no common language. ... Well, what do you want now?
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
91c5bf8
|
The sole object of revolution was the abolition of senseless suffering. But it had turned out that the removal of this second kind of suffering was only possible at the price of a temporary enormous increase in the sum total of the first. So the question now ran: Was such an operation justified? Obviously it was, if one spoke in the abstract of "mankind"; but, applied to "man" in the singular, to the cipher 2--4, the real human being of bon..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
6bbdaad
|
Hierarchies are 'dissectible' into their constituent branches, on which the holons form the 'nodes'. The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises is called its 'depth', and the number of holons on any given level its 'span'.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
6df246e
|
A shapeless figure bent over him, he smelt the fresh leather of the revolver belt; but what insignia did the figure wear on the sleeves and shoulder straps of its uniform--and in whose name did it raise the dark pistol barrel? A second, smashing blow hit him on the ear. Then all became quiet. There was the sea again with its sounds. A wave slowly lifted him up. It came from afar and travelled sedately on, a shrug of eternity.
|
|
mortality
tender-indifference
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
5ee79e3
|
The sex-drive in the Freudian system is essentially something to be disposed of -through the proper channels or by sublimation; pleasure is derived not from its pursuit, but from getting rid of it.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
b9cfc64
|
Persuasion may play a part in a man's conversion; but only the part of bringing to its full and conscious climax a process which has been maturing in regions where no persuasion can penetrate. A faith is not acquired; it grows like a tree.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
e013a8f
|
Among other members of our cell I remember Dr. Wilhelm Reich, Founder and Director of the Sex-Pol. (Institute for Sexual Politics). He was a Freudian Marxist; inspired by Malinowski, he had just published a book called 'The Function of the Orgasm,' in which he expounded the theory that the sexual frustration of the Proletariat caused a thwarting of its political consciousness; only through a full, uninhibited release of the sexual urge coul..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
982a051
|
The comic effect of the satire is derived from the simultaneous presence, in the reader's mind, of the social reality with which he is familiar, and of its reflections in the distorting mirror of the satirist. It focuses attention on abuses and deformities in society of which, blunted by habit, we were no longer aware; it makes us suddenly discover the absurdity of the familiar and the familiarity of the absurd.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
6f11ffa
|
They dreamed of power with the object of abolishing power; of ruling over the people to wean them from the habit of being ruled.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
aa4ab28
|
I am trying to stress a point which they do not sufficiently emphasize, or tend to overlook altogether-namely, that the organism is not a mosaic aggregate of elementary physico-chemical processes, but a hierarchy in which each member, from the sub-cellular level upward, is a closely integrated structure, equipped with self-regulatory devices, and enjoys an advanced form of self-government.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
62c01a6
|
But where is the jury who decides whether devotion is of the 'right' or the 'misguided' kind?
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
d60815d
|
Leaving controversial issues aside, the first and main purpose of this book may be summed up by a phrase of Laplace: "If we were able to make an exact catalogue of all particles and forces which are active in a speck of dust, the laws of the universe at large would hold no more mysteries for us". On a medium-sized school globe the State of Israel occupies not much more space than a speck of dust; and yet there is hardly a political, social ..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
29f7ef4
|
Una vez hubo un matematico que dijo que el algebra era una ciencia para la gente perezosa, puesto que uno no conoce el valor de X,pero opera con el como si lo conociese. En nuestro caso, X representa a las masas anonimas, al pueblo. La politica es el arte de hacer operaciones con esta X sin preocuparse por conocer su naturaleza real, mientras que hacer historia consiste en dar a X el valor exacto que debe tener en la ecucion.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
85695b5
|
The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.
|
|
originality
forgetting
creativity
creation
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
e6fb36d
|
Art, like religion, is a school of self-transcendence; it expands individual awareness into cosmic awareness, as science teaches us to reduce any particular puzzle to the great universal puzzle.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
3f212de
|
It is not difficult to imagine the Catholic Church adopting, after a Tychonic transition, the Copernican cosmology some 200 years earlier than she eventually did. The Galileo affair was an isolated episode in the history of relations between science and theology. But its dramatic circumstances, magnified out of all proportion, created a popular belief that science stood for freedom, the Church for oppression of thought. Some historians wish..
|
|
science-vs-religion
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
6cda9f4
|
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 shared belief-systems. It is derived from primitive identification instead of mature social integration; it entails the partial surrender of personal responsibility and produces the quasi-hypnotic phenomena of group-psychology.
|
|
violence
depersonalization
disease
evil
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
4ac1494
|
Let me repeat: the crimes of violence committed for selfish personal motives are historically insignificant compared to those committed ad majoram gloriam Dei, out of a self-sacrificing devotion to a flag, a leader, a religious faith, or a political conviction. Man has always been prepared not only to kill but also to die for good, bad or completely futile causes. And what can be a more valid proof of the reality of the self-transcending ur..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
277614b
|
Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance, and atonement are for us repellent debauchery. To sit down and let oneself be hypnotized by one's own navel, to turn up one's eyes and humbly offer the back of one's neck to Gletkin's revolver--that is an easy solution. The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most great revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spa..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
fa8cbc2
|
Each wrong idea we follow is a crime committed against future generations.
|
|
history
politics
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
bf5bfe0
|
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.
|
|
righteousness
humanity
truth
revolution
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
f3a5ba0
|
Saints and mystics spend their lives trying to escape the prison of the flesh;
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
d5536a4
|
Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
9659e26
|
To quote Dr. Ewer: 'Behaviour will tend to be always a jump ahead of structure and so play a decisive role in the evolutionary process.' In this light, evolution no longer appears as a tale told by an idiot, but rather as an epic recited by a stutterer-at times haltingly and painfully, then precipitating in bursts.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
081a9a7
|
When 'consciousness' is unawares transferred from great things to small' - which Spencer regarded as the prime cause of laughter-the result will be either a comic or an aesthetic experience, depending on whether the person's emotions are of the type capable of participating in the transfer or not. The artist, reversing the parodist's technique, walks on a tightrope, as it were, along the line where the exalted and the trivial planes meet; h..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
848d5db
|
But at keast we know that the Brotherhood was both a scientific academy and a monastic order; that its members led an ascetic communal life where all property was shared, thus anticipating the Essenes and the primitive Christian communities. We know that much of their time was spent in contemplation, and that initiation into the higher mysteries of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine depended upon the purification of spirit and body, which..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
0ed4f86
|
Israel's rebirth as a nation after two thousand years is a freak phenomenon of history. But in all the branches of science the observation of freak phenomena yields important clues to general laws. Dwarf stars and human giants, radioactivity and parthenogenesis, prophets, maniacs and saints are all freaks which carry the conditions of normality to a pointed and profiled extreme. So does this race of eternal victims with its flayed skin and ..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
19bb854
|
The earliest discovery of Pasteur, and for him the most exciting in all his life, was the asymmetry of molecules as a specific characteristic of living organisms-in other words, the fact that the molecules of living matter come in two varieties which, though chemically identical, are in their spatial structure like mirror images to each other-or like right and left gloves. 'Left-handed' molecules rotate polarized light to the left, 'right-h..
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
76a7db2
|
This was written before the full extent of the holocaust was known, but that does not alter the fact that the large majority of surviving Jews in the world is of Eastern European -
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
6b81390
|
Thus experience, both of the exalted and trivial kind, indicates that the mind is particularly receptive to and suggestible by messages which arrive in a rhythmic pattern, or accompanied by a rhythmic pattern.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |
|
897f554
|
Emphasis and implication are complementary techniques. The first bullies the audience into acceptance; the second entices it into mental collaboration; the first forces the offer down the consumer's throat; the second tantalizes, to whet his appetite.
|
|
|
Arthur Koestler |