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Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Books

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“... 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.”

EvilViolenceDiseaseBelief SystemsDepersonalization
Book:The Ghost in the Machine
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“[January 1944] As to this country, I have been lecturing now for three years to the troops and their attitude is the same. They don’t believe in concentration camps, they don’t believe in the starved children of Greece, in the shot hostages of France, in the mass-graves of Poland; they have never heard of Lidice, Treblinka or Belzec; you can convince them for an hour, then they shake themselves, their mental self-defence begins to work and in a week the shrug of incredulity has returned like a reflex temporarily weakened by a shock. Clearly all this is becoming a mania with me and my like. Clearly we must suffer from some morbid obsession, whereas the others are healthy and normal. But the characteristic symptom of maniacs is that they lose contact with reality and live in a phantasy world. So perhaps it is the other way around: perhaps it is we, the screamers, who react in a sound and healthy way to the reality which surrounds us, whereas you are the neurotic, who totter about in a screamed phantasy world because you lack the faculty to face the facts! Were it not so, this war would have been avoided, and those murdered within sight of your daydreaming eyes would still be alive!”

HistoryGeniusInsanitySympathyHolocaustElitismEgalitarianismEye OpeningSad TruthHuman Stupidity
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“While serving one of his countless sentences of imprisonment, he was given ex-wrestler Paul as cell companion. Paul was at that time a dock worker; he was in jail for having, during a strike riot, remembered his professional past and applied the grip known as a double Nelson to a policeman. This grip consisted in passing one's arms through the opponent's arm­pits from behind, locking one's hands behind his neck, and pressing his head down until the neck vertebra began to crack. In the ring this had always brought him considerable applause, but he had learned to his regret that in the class struggle the double Nelson was not done.”

HumorWrestlingRiotingStriking
Book:Darkness at noon
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“Da die Freiheit eine Sache der Gradunterschiede ist, so besteht die große Gefahr, daß diejenigen, welche nicht durch Erfahrung immun geworden sind, unmerklich in die aufeinanderfolgenden Grade von Unfreiheit hineingleiten. Dies gilt für unsre ganze westliche Zivilisation. Die großen Geschichtskatastrophen, wie der Zerfall Roms, kamen nicht in einem lauten Krach, sondern sie waren wie ein sachtes Abwärtsgleiten, das Jahrhunderte oder Jahrzehnte andauern kann.”

FreiheitZivilisationUntergangZerfall
Book:The Yogi and the Commissar, and Other Essays
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“No man is an island- he is a holon. A Janus-faced entity who, looking inward, sees himself as a self-contained unique whole, looking outward as a dependent part. His self-assertive tendency is the dynamic manifestation of his unique wholeness, his autonomy and independence as a holon. Its equally universal antagonist, the integrative tendency, expresses his dependence on the larger whole to which he belongs: his 'part-ness.'.”

MenSelfWholeUniqueUniversalIndependenceTendenciesManifestationIslandsDependentEntityInwardWholenessDependenceAutonomyAssertiveAntagonistSelf ContainedJanus
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation.We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.”

IfsMenSelfReasonNationsCausesInterestChurchTroubleCapacityClaimsSpeciesDuesDrivenContraryDisasterDevotionConclusionUrgesExcessAggressionTribesPreservationSelf InterestSelf PreservationDetrimentalCredo
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“Modern man lives isolated in his artificial environment, not because the artificial is evil as such, but because of his lack of comprehension of the forces which make it work- of the principles which relate his gadgets to the forces of nature, to the universal order. It is not central heating which makes his existence 'unnatural,' but his refusal to take an interest in the principles behind it. By being entirely dependent on science, yet closing his mind to it, he leads the life of an urban barbarian.”

MenMindOrderEvilForceInterestBehindsExistencePrinciplesEnvironmentSocietyModernUniversalRelateDependentArtificialIsolatedUrbanClosingRefusalComprehensionUnnaturalBarbariansGadgetsModern ManForces Of NatureHeating
Book:The Act of Creation
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“Some tribes [of monkeys] have taken to washing potatoes in the river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating groups of potato-washers meet non-washers, and the two groups watch each other's strange behavior with apparent bewilderment. But unlike the inhabitants of Lilliput, who fought holy crusades over the question at which end to break the egg, the potato-washing monkeys do not go to war with the non-washers, because the poor creatures have no language which would enable them to declare washing a diving commandment and eating unwashed potatoes a deadly heresy.”

TwoWarEndsSometimesLanguagePoorWatchesBreakTakenGroupsSocietyStrangeHolyCreaturesBehaviorEatingRiversEggsCommandmentsTribesMonkeysPotatoesHeresyWashingCrusadesDivingBewilderment
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“The integrative tendencies of the individual operate through the mechanisms of empathy, sympathy, projection, introjection, identification, worship- all of which make him feel that he is a part of some larger entity which transcends the boundaries of the individual self. This psychological urge to belong, to participate, to commune is as primary and real as its opposite. The all-important question is the nature of that higher entity of which the individual feels himself a part.”

FeelsImportantRealSelfIndividualSocietyHigherWorshipEmpathyOppositesBoundariesTendenciesPsychologicalPrimariesUrgesMechanismEntityProjectionIdentificationImportant QuestionsCommunes
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“Zen is to religion what a Japanese "rock garden" is to a garden. Zen knows no god, no afterlife, no good and no evil, as the rock-garden knows no flowers, herbs or shrubs. It has no doctrine or holy writ: its teaching is transmitted mainly in the form of parables as ambiguous as the pebbles in the rock-garden which symbolise now a mountain, now a fleeting tiger. When a disciple asks "What is Zen?", the master's traditional answer is "Three pounds of flax" or "A decaying noodle" or "A toilet stick" or a whack on the pupil's head.”

KnowsFormThreeEvilAsksAnswersTeachingRocksFlowerMastersHolyMountainGardenSticksDoctrineTraditionalPoundsAfterlifeDiscipleTigersFleetingToiletsHerbsPupilsAmbiguousPebblesParablesNoodlesShrubsFlax
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky . The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrant nude differs from a nude by Manet.”

RealityOrderSpaceSkyCreationPeriodsGloryDiscoveryAspectScientistAbsolutesChaosPainterComposerObserversVansFrame Of Reference
Book:The Act of Creation
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“Indeed, the ideal for a well-functioning democratic state is like the ideal for a gentleman's well-cut suit it is not noticed. For the common people of Britain, Gestapo and concentration camps have approximately the same degree of reality as the monster of Loch Ness. Atrocity propaganda is helpless against this healthy lack of imagination.”

PeopleWellsStatesRealityImaginationCommonCuttingHealthyDegreesIdealsDemocraticMonstersSuitsPropagandaGentlemanBritainConcentrationCampsHelplessAtrocitiesConcentration CampGestapo
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“If time is treated in modern physics as a dimension on a par with the dimensions of space, why should we a priori exclude the possibility that we are pulled as well as pushed along its axis? The future has, after all, as much or as little reality as the past, and there is nothing logically inconceivable in introducing, as a working hypothesis, an element of finality, supplementary to the element of causality, into our equations. It betrays a great lack of imagination to believe that the concept of "purpose" must necessarily be associated with some anthropomorphic deity.”

IfsShouldBelieveWellsLittlesRealityPastPurposeImaginationSpaceModernPossibilityElementsConceptsPhysicsTreatedDimensionsBetrayIntroducingHypothesisEquationsDeitiesAxesFinalityCausalityModern Physics
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“All "if" statements about the past are as dubious as prophecies of the future are. It seems fairly plausible that if Alexander or Ghengis Khan had never been born, some other individual would have filled his place and executed the design of the Hellenic or Mongolic expansion; but the Alexanders of philosophy and religion, of science and art, seem less expendable; their impact seems less determined by economic challenges and social pressures; and they seem to have a much wider range of possibilities to influence the direction, shape and texture of civilizations.”

IfsArtPhilosophySeemsPastIndividualSocialBornChallengesInfluenceEconomicDesignPossibilityCivilizationShapesPressureImpactFilledDeterminedStatementsRangeProphecyExpansionTextureArt And SciencePlausibleDubiousPhilosophy And ReligionSocial PressureExpendables
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“It is impossible to decide whether a particular detail of the Pythagorean universe was the work of the master, or filled in by a pupil a remark which equally applies to Leonardo or Michelangelo . But there can be no doubt that the basic features were conceived by a single mind; that Pythagoras of Samos was both the founder of a new religious philosophy, and the founder of Science, as the word is understood today.”

MindPhilosophyTodayUniverseReligiousDoubtImpossibleParticularMastersUnderstoodFilledDetailsFeaturesNo DoubtFoundersRemarksPupilsLeonardoReligious PhilosophyFilled In
Book:The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe
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“The Revolutionary's Utopia, which in appearance represents a complete break with the past, is always modeled on some image of the Lost Paradise, of a legendary Golden Age... All utopias are fed from the source of mythology; the social engineers' blueprints are merely revised editions of the ancient text.”

AgePastLostSocialBreakAtheismSourceAncientAppearancePositive AtheismMythologyGoldenRevolutionaryParadiseFedsEngineersUtopiaLegendaryBlueprintsGolden Age
Book:the god that failed
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“The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into the magic aura are not dealt with rationally but by a specific type of pseudo-reasoning. Absurdities and contradictions are made acceptable by specious rationalizations.”

MindKindMadeBeliefMagicAtheismTypeArgumentPositive AtheismDefenseReasoningUnconsciousContradictionAcceptableAbsurdityPenetrateAurasPseudo
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“Somebody once asked Niels Bohr why he had a horseshoe hanging above the front door of his house. Surely you, a world famous physicist, can't really believe that hanging a horseshoe above your door brings you luck? Of course not, Bohr replied, but I have been reliably informed that it will bring me luck whether I believe in it or not.”

WorldBelieveHas BeensCoursesHouseI BelieveDoorsAtheismFrontsLuckI Believe InPositive AtheismPhysicistFront DoorsWorld FamousHorseshoes
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one's own nervous system.”

MayCasesTricksNervousDelusionFrighteningRaptureNervous SystemHallucinationsUncompromising
Book:Kaleidoscope: essays from Drinkers of infinity, and The heel of Achilles and later pieces and stories
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“One question that people always ask at home is never asked here: "What happened to Communism in Russia?" Everybody yawns when a visitor brings it up, because the answer is so obvious to every Russian. The answer is that there never was Communism in Russia; there were only communists.”

PeopleHomeAsksAnswersHappenedObviousRussiaCommunismCommunistVisitors
Book:The trail of the dinosaur: and Reflections on hanging
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