Arthur Koestler Quotes

The ultimate truth is penultimately a falsehood.

A new untruth is better than an old truth.

The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

That which is cannot be true.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

Telling the truth to people who misunderstand you is generally promoting a falsehood, isn't it?

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

Truth is seldom appreciated and never understood, whereas a flattering lie is always appreciated and instantly understood.

For only when I err do I get away from what I know and what I understand. If "truth" were what I can understand, it would end up being but a small truth, my-sized. Truth must reside precisely in what I shall never understand.

The problem with assumptions is that we believe they are the truth.

Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

You've learned that every good lie is threaded with truth and every accepted truth leaks lies.

There are some lies that, under the right circumstances, are the only truth

Since I wasn't able to leave a succession of beautiful lies, I want to leave the smidgen of truth that the falsehood of everything lets us suppose we can tell.

Unless devotion is given to the thing which must prove false in the end, the thing that is true in the end cannot enter.

...a truth you don't understand is more dangerous than a lie.

The world progresses only through misunderstanding.

Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths.

The truth is still the truth whether or not you believe it. Can we say the same about lies? No, lies only exist because we believe them. If we don't believe in lies, they simply disappear.

The world isn't what you think it is.

Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it a numerical presumption.

Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

A thing either is what it appears to be; or it is not, but yet appears to be; or it is, but does not appear to be; or it is not, and does not appear to be.

A lie was something that hadn't happened but might just as well have.

My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.