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
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.
In practice
In a debate about the role of ethics in historical events, one might use this quote to emphasize the impartial nature of historical progress.
Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.
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.
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 β of previously unrelated frames of reference or universes of discourse β 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.
We must never forget that Black History is American History. The achievements of African Americans have contributed to our nation's greatness.
One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans (1888).
The world must know what happened, and never forget.
Why are some things remembered and others forgotten? That is the theme I want to pursue about the Second World War.
The search for a Jewish national home came about due to centuries of anti-Semitic pogroms, expulsions, discrimination and hate. The Holocaust was simply the evil culmination of all that came before it.
The men who founded and governed Massachusetts and Connecticut took themselves so seriously that they kept track of everything they did for the benefit of posterity and hoarded their papers so carefully that the whole history of the United States, recounted mainly by their descendants, has often appeared to be the history of New England writ large.
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