"Oh, they had an explanation ready for every occasion, from the extension of capital punishment to the twelve-year-old to the abolition of the Soviet workers’ right to strike and to the one-party-election-system; they called it ‘revolutionary dialectics’ and reminded one of those conjurers on the stage who can produce an egg from every pocket of their frockcoats and even out of the harmless onlooker’s nose. They explained everything so well that, during a committee meeting, old Heinrich Mann, at one time a great ‘sympathiser,’ shouted to Dahlem, leader of the German Communists: ‘If you go on asking me to realise that this table here is a fishpond, then I am afraid my dialectical capacities are at an end.’"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
People from BudapestNovelists from HungaryEssayists from HungaryPhilosophers from HungaryHistorians from Hungary
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Scum of the Earth (1941)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_Koestler
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Arthur Koestler
1905 – 1983
ungarisch-englischer Schriftsteller
28 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Arthur Koestler →
Related Quotes
"I read Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon with its poignant account of a communist show trial. Unlike Valtin's descri…"
"Indeed, the ideal for a well-functioning democratic state is like the ideal for a gentleman's well-cut suit — it is n…"
"Men cannot be treated as units in operations of political arithmetic because they behave like the symbols for zero an…"
"In the social equation, the value of a single life is nil; in the cosmic equation, it is infinite... Not only communi…"
"I profoundly admire Aldous Huxley, both for his philosophy and uncompromising sincerity. But I disagree with his advo…"
"Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same in…"
"If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has…"
"The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution provid…"
"God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out."
"The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeletons of discarded theories wh…"