Arthur Koestler Quotes

I think violence has always been popular, way before movies started being made.

Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.

The English are good at bad guys - the James Bond-style villain, cunning, slow-burning. The Americans are much more obvious about it.

Violence is totally accepted in this country.

He’s body slammed enough people to start a new country. And there could be a neighbouring city for the people he’s punched in the throat

But the English do not know what surprise is. No one ever turns his head to look at anyone else in the street.

A body came flying out and landed at my feet. At first I thought it was Billy so I picked him up. But when I saw it wasn't I dropped him back down.

The ideology of hardness and cruelty runs through American culture like an electric current.

People who type with their iPhones on loud are barbarians and probably killers.

I've come from a very masculine country to a feminine country. England was very masculine; people went from England to abroad, and they landed from above and they said "These are the gods you will worship, these are the crops you will grow, now go away and do it." Which is a manly attitude. Americans go abroad and they say, "Try not to quarrel so much", which is a feminine attitude.

Generally in New York, people just walk over you with no problem about that. Other countries, people want to resuscitate you, like, after a bit.

England is the only civilised country in the world where it is etiquette to fall on the food like a wolf the moment it is served. Elsewhere it is comme il faut to wait until everybody has helped himself to everything and until everything on everybody's plate is stone cold.

I am a Muslim, because it's a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time.

I not only weaken the opposition, I’m going to make them dead ... and if anyone is strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs and put them in a cage.

If someone stands in the way of true justice, you simply walk up behind them, and stab them in the heart.

For Europeans a president having an affair, especially in France, is a joke. No one cares, it would never bring this kind of trouble to a country.

People look at things differently. Imagine going to a village in Southern Sudan and try to explain to someone there the concept of life insurance or retirement. Go to Vietnam and say retirement. Retirement in another country is your body is too racked with pain and your hands are too arthritic from the life in the rice patty fields, so you can't work anymore. So you move in with your son and his new wife takes care of you because that's how families work there.

Marriage still means a lot more in the country I come from than it does here. I don't think there's anything to be gained by it for the couple. But for children I think it's an important thing.

Howdy. I'm gonna separate your head from your shoulders. Hope you don't mind none.

Unjust use of force, strength, and brutality. Those are the forces that make me feel vulnerable.

Let's hook up and just bring fiery death.

Where the banana grows man is sensual and cruel.

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.

If I lived through the next day or so, I needed to start keeping track of where these jokers liked to get their bloodthirsty freak on. It might give me an edge someday. Or at least a list of places that could use a nice burning down. I hadn't burned down a building in ages.

That's how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one's hand.