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Darkness at Noon QUOTES

Darkness at Noon QUOTES

1 " The old disease, thought Rubashov. Revolutionaries should not think through other people's minds. Or, perhaps they should? Or even ought to? How can one change the world if one identifies oneself with everybody? How else can one change it? He who understands and forgives -- where would he find a motive to act? Where would he not? "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

2 " Each wrong idea we follow is a crime committed against future generations. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

3 " History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unnering flows towards her goal. History knows herway. She makes no mistakes. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

4 " The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood. He who will be proved right in the end appears to be wrong and harmful before it. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

5 " Our Press and our schools cultivate Chauvinism, militarism, dogmatism, conformism and ignorance. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been. We have built up the most gigantic police apparatus, with informers made a national institution, and the most refined scientific system of political and mental torture. We whip the groaning masses of the country towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

6 " ...The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

7 " Satan, on the contrary, is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic. He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness. He is damned always to do that which is most repugnant to him: to become a slaughterer, in order to abolish slaughtering, to sacrifice lambs so that no more lambs may be slaughtered, to whip people with knouts so that they may learn not to let themselves be whipped, to strip himself of every scruple in the name of a higher scrupulousness, and to challenge the hatred of mankind because of his love for it--an abstract and geometric love. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

8 " A shapeless figure bent over him, he smelt the fresh leather of the revolver belt; but what insignia did the figure wear on the sleeves and shoulder straps of its uniform—and in whose name did it raise the dark pistol barrel?

A second, smashing blow hit him on the ear. Then all became quiet. There was the sea again with its sounds. A wave slowly lifted him up. It came from afar and travelled sedately on, a shrug of eternity. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

9 " History had a slow pulse; man counted in years, history in generations "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

10 " The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains the only rule of political ethics; anything else is just a vague chatter and melts away between one’s fingers. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

11 " The fact is: I no longer believe in my own infallibility. That is why I am lost. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

12 " Honor is decency without vanity. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

13 " I don't approve of mixing ideologies," Ivanov continued. "There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community--which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb. The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality. Humbugs and dilettantes have always tried to mix the two conceptions; in practice, it is impossible. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

14 " The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton and Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears…. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

15 " The cause of the Party’s defectiveness must be found. All our principles were right, but our results were wrong. This is a diseased century. We diagnosed the disease and its causes with microscopic exactness, but whenever we applied the healing knife anew sore appeared. Our will was hard and pure, we should have been loved by the people. But they hate us. Why are we so odious and detested? We brought you truth, and in our mouth it sounded a lie. We brought you freedom, and it looks in our hands like a whip. We brought you the living life, and where our voices is heard the trees wither and there is a rustling of dry leaves. We brought you the promise of the future, but our tongue stammered and barked… "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

16 " What had he said to them? "I bow my knees before the country, before the masses, before the whole people...." And what then? What happened to these masses, to this people? For forty years it had been driven through the desert, with threats and promises, with imaginary terrors and imaginary rewards. But where was the Promised Land? Did there really exist any such goal for this wandering mankind? That was a question to which he would have liked an answer before it was too late. Moses had not been allowed to enter the land of promise either, But he had been allowed to see it, from the top of the mountain, spread at his feet. Thus, it was easy to die, with the visible certainty of one's goal before one's eyes. He, Nicolas Salmanovitch Rubashov, had not been taken to the top of a mountain; and wherever his eye looked, he saw nothing but desert and the darkness of night. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

17 " Nothing is worse in prison than the consciousness of one's innocenc; it prevents acclimatizatin and undermines one's morale... "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

18 " But who will be proved right? It will only be known later. Meanwhile he is bound to act on credit and sell his soul to the devil, in the hope of history's absolution. "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

19 " and there was only one revolutionary virtue which he had not learned, the virtue of self-deception "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon

20 " We brought you truth, and in our mouth it sounded a lie. We brought you freedom, and it looks in our hands like a whip. We brought you the living life, and where our voice is heard the trees wither and there is a rustling of dry leaves. We brought you the promise of the future, but our tongue stammered and barked... "

― Arthur Koestler , Darkness at Noon