Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.
Arthur KoestlerRead
If 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.
Interpretation
Human history reveals a troubling tendency towards self-destruction that is largely unique to our species.
Arthur Koestler's quote suggests that when observing human history, one might conclude that humanity possesses an inherent flaw or 'mental disorder' that leads us to engage in destructive behaviors. Unlike other species that typically avoid such self-harm, humans exhibit patterns of violence and murder, implying a troubling aspect of our nature that drives us toward conflict and chaos.
In practice
A discussion on the inherent flaws in human society could incorporate this quote to emphasize our unique propensity for violence.
Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.
History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unnering flows towards her goal. History knows herway. She makes no mistakes.
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.
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 — of previously unrelated frames of reference or universes of discourse — whose union will solve the previously insoluble problem.
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.
The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.
Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.
For after all, what is there behind, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O lord, give me money, only money.
Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be.
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?
It has been said: The whole is more than the sum of its parts. It is more correct to say that the whole is something else than the sum of its parts, because summing up is a meaningless procedure, whereas the whole-part relationship is meaningful.
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