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Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler Quotes

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Famous Arthur Koestler Quotes

“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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“I profoundly admire Aldous Huxley, both for his philosophy and uncompromising sincerity. But I disagree with his advocacy of 'the chemical opening of doors into the Other World', and with his belief that drugs can procure 'what Catholic theologians call a gratuitous grace'. 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.”

WorldMayPhilosophyBeliefCasesGraceDoorsDrugCatholicTricksAdmireOpeningNervousDelusionChemicalsSincerityDisagreeFrighteningTheologianOther WorldsRaptureNervous SystemAdvocacyHallucinationsUncompromisingHuxley
Book:Kaleidoscope: essays from Drinkers of infinity, and The heel of Achilles and later pieces and stories
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“The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.”

GivingMayEndsMomentsFactsConsciousnessCome UpAppearanceInsightIntuitionSurfaceInvisibleChainsReasoningVisibleLinksMiraculousCircuitsEmergenceMoment Of TruthShort Circuit
Book:The Act of Creation
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“Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which-miraculously, it seems-merge into a significant event. It provides the neatest paradigm of the bisociation of previously separate contexts, engineered by fate. Coincidences are puns of destiny. In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot; in the coincidental happening, two strings of events are knitted together by invisible hands.”

MayTwoHandsSeemsTogetherChanceDestinyFateEventsHappeningsSignificantInvisibleChainsEncountersStringsCoincidenceParadigmKnotsAcousticsTangledPunInvisible HandCoincidence In LifeChance EncountersSignificant Events
Author:Arthur Koestler
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“Of all forms of mental activity, the most difficult to induce even in the minds of the young, who may be presumed not to have lost their flexibility, is the art of handling the same bundle of data as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving them a different framework, all of which virtually means putting on a different kind of thinking-cap for the moment. It is easy to teach anybody a new fact...but it needs light from heaven above to enable a teacher to break the old framework in which the student is accustomed to seeing.”

ThinkingNeedsGivingMindKindMayMeanArtDifferentMomentsFactsLightFormYoungLostHeavenEasyDifficultTeachBreakTeacherSeeingStudentsActivityRelationDataDifferent KindsAccustomedFlexibilityFrameworkCapsBundlesThinking Flexibly
Author:Arthur Koestler
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