Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.
Arthur KoestlerRead
History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unnering flows towards her goal. History knows herway. She makes no mistakes.
Interpretation
What this quote means
History moves relentlessly towards its course without moral considerations or errors.
This quote suggests that history is an unstoppable force that progresses with certainty and purpose, regardless of human values, intentions, or mistakes. It implies that while individuals may hesitate or exhibit moral dilemmas, history itself is impartial and relentless in its trajectory.
Themes
HistoryInevitabilityRelentlessnessTruthProgress
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about the role of ethics in historical events, one might use this quote to emphasize the impartial nature of historical progress.
More from Arthur Koestler
All quotes βIf one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of his history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction. Murder within the species on an individual or collective scale is a phenomenon unknown in the whole animal kingdom, except for man, and a few varieties of ants and rats.
Arthur KoestlerRead
Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition. Let Othello subject Desdemona to a lie-detector test; his jealousy will still blind him to the evidence. Let Oedipus triumph over gravity; he won't triumph over his fate.
Arthur KoestlerRead
The real achievement in discoveries... is seeing an analogy where no one saw one before... The essence of discovery is that unlikely marriage of cabbages and kings β of previously unrelated frames of reference or universes of discourse β whose union will solve the previously insoluble problem.
Arthur KoestlerRead
In my youth I regarded the universe as an open book, printed in the language of equations, whereas now it appears to me as a text written in invisible ink, of which in our rare moments of grace we are able to decipher a small segment.
Arthur KoestlerRead
The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.
Arthur KoestlerRead
Similar quotes
We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village.
Moshe DayanRead
Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together!
Mark TwainRead
If we trace the history of any nation backwards into the past, we come at last to a period of myths and traditions which eventually fade away into impenetrable darkness.
Bal Gangadhar TilakRead
When we dwell on the enormity of the Second World War and its victims, we try to absorb all those statistics of national and ethnic tragedy. But, as a result, there is a tendency to overlook the way the war changed even the survivors' lives in ways impossible to predict.
Antony BeevorRead
The Civil War created in this country what had never existed before - a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union; it was the rebirth of the Union.
Woodrow WilsonRead
We dare not forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution.
John F. KennedyRead