Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.
Arthur KoestlerRead
Without the hard little bits of marble which are called 'facts' or 'data' one cannot compose a mosaic; what matters, however, are not so much the individual bits, but the successive patterns into which you arrange them, then break them up and rearrange them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Facts are important, but the way we connect and rearrange them creates understanding.
This quote by Arthur Koestler emphasizes the significance of data and facts in forming a larger picture or understanding. However, it also highlights that the true value lies not just in the individual pieces of information, but in the patterns we can create by arranging and re-evaluating them, suggesting that knowledge is a dynamic and iterative process.
Themes
FactsDataPatternsUnderstandingKnowledge
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation on research findings, you might use this quote to illustrate the importance of data interpretation.
More from Arthur Koestler
All quotes →History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unnering flows towards her goal. History knows herway. She makes no mistakes.
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.
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 — of previously unrelated frames of reference or universes of discourse — 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
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