Milan Kundera Quotes

Quotes about:

• The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was... The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

  Milan Kundera

  Memories, Struggle, Book

  The Book of Laughter and Forgetting pt. 1, sec. 2 (1980) (translation by Michael Henry Heim)

  204 Copy quote

• The man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present... he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future... he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.

  Milan Kundera

  Inspirational, Time, Freedom

  270 Copy quote

• The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.

  Milan Kundera

  People, Liberty, World

  76 Copy quote
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  The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

  Milan Kundera

  People, Stupidity, Answers

  "Siraaj: An Arab Tale". Book by Radwa Ashour and Barbara Romaine, 2007.

  107 Copy quote

• When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

  Milan Kundera

  Inspirational, Heart, Mind

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

  71 Copy quote

• To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.

  Milan Kundera

  Letting Go, Dog, Stress

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  59 Copy quote

• People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.

  Milan Kundera

  Past, People, Political

  The Book of Laughter and Forgetting pt. 1, sec. 17 (1980) (translation by Michael Henry Heim)

  122 Copy quote

• The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.

  Milan Kundera

  Past, People, Want

  The Book of Laughter and Forgetting pt. 1, sec. 17 (1980) (translation by Michael Henry Heim)

  9 Copy quote

• The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

  Milan Kundera

  Mean, Greek, Suffering

  128 Copy quote

• There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.

  Milan Kundera

  Age, Moments, Certain

  95 Copy quote

• Modern stupidity means not ignorance but the nonthought of received ideas

  Milan Kundera

  Mean, Ignorance, Ideas

  10 Copy quote

• A man is responsible for his ignorance.

  Milan Kundera

  Ignorance, Men, Responsible

  12 Copy quote

• The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.

  Milan Kundera

  Lying, Worry, Anxiety

  21 Copy quote

• Beauty is a rebellion against time.

  Milan Kundera

  Rebellion

  12 Copy quote

• Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.

  Milan Kundera

  Memories, Doe, Film

  61 Copy quote

• There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact. In the course of a single second, our senses of sight, of hearing, of smell, register (knowingly or not) a swarm of events and a parade of sensations and ideas passes through our head. Each instant represents a little universe, irrevocably forgotten in the next instant.

  Milan Kundera

  Lying, Sadness, Elude Us

  12 Copy quote

• Merely by being born intelligent, you right away find yourself in absolute exile.

  Milan Kundera

  Intelligent, Finding Yourself, Born

  "Farewell Waltz: A Novel". Book by Milan Kundera, 1976.

  26 Copy quote

• In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.

  Milan Kundera

  Answers, Kitsch, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

  11 Copy quote

• You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.

  Milan Kundera

  Love, Two, Numbers

  "Identity". Book by Milan Kundera, 1998.

  50 Copy quote

• The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.

  Milan Kundera

  Lying, People, Ability

  54 Copy quote

• The emotion of love gives all of us a misleading illusion of knowing the other.

  Milan Kundera

  Knowing, Giving, Emotion

  22 Copy quote

• Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You'd dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You'd see the face of a stranger. And you'd know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you.

  Milan Kundera

  Dream, Reflection, Mirrors

  90 Copy quote

• I am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails.

  Milan Kundera

  Dirty, Wine, People

  5 Copy quote

• Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!

  Milan Kundera

  Eye, Infinity, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

  17 Copy quote

• All previous crimes of the Russian empire had been committed under the cover of a discreet shadow. The deportation of a million Lithuanians, the murder of hundreds of thousands of Poles, the liquidation of the Crimean Tatars remain in our memory, but no photographic documentation exists; sooner or later they will therefore be proclaimed as fabrications.

  Milan Kundera

  Memories, Shadow, Empires

  13 Copy quote

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