Arthur Koestler Quotes

I hate to think life is just facts and laws.

There are things I am more interested in than the clone thing. How are they trying to find their place in the world and make sense of their lives? To what extent can they transcend their fate? As time starts to run out, what are the things that really matter?

Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

We like to believe we are in control of our destinies, even though we never are and we never have been.

No destiny attacks us from outside. But, within him, man bears his fate and there comes a moment when he knows himself vulnerable; and then, as in a vertigo, blunder upon blunder lures him.

The fates have a way of demanding of a man that he suffer his greatest moments all by himself; being lone seems as often attendant upon reality as being in company is attendant upon the flight from reality.

- Why me? - That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber? - Yes. - Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.

We're either nothing or a God's regret.

Are we no greater than the noise we make Along one blind atomic pilgrimage Whereon by crass chance billeted we go Because our brains and bones and cartilage Will have it so?

I hate the word "inevitable" because I feel like things don't have to be the way they are.

All is vanity, look you; and so the preacher is vanity too.

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.

It's the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everthing's being decided in advance and we pretend we're making choices. Free will may be an illusion. I often think that.

Destiny is another name for humanity's half-hearted yet persistent search for death. Again and again peoples have had the chance to live and show what would happen if human life were irrigated by continual happiness; and they have preferred to blow up the canals and perish of drought.

Human life must be some form of mistake.

All art is a revolt against man's fate.

Diminish the influence of fate

If the effort also is predestined, it is not the less our effort, made of our free will.

When I was done traveling, I returned convinced of one thing: we're nothing.

All of this passes, and none of it means anything to me.It's all foreign to my fate, and even to fate as a whole. It'sjust unconsciousness, curses of protest when chance hurlsstones, echoes of unknown voices - a collectivemishmash of life.

They tell him that there is no why, since the moment simply is and since all of them are trapped in the moment, like bugs in amber.

It doesn't matter how anything happens.

Being embodied as such is no insurance against feelings of hopelessness or meaningslessness. Beyond his body, he still has to know who he is.