Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• To laugh is to live profoundly.

  Milan Kundera

  Laughing, Chaos

  36 Copy quote

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

  Milan Kundera

  Eye, Infinity, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

  17 Copy quote

• The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.

  Milan Kundera

  Order, Life Is, Longing

  Milan Kundera (1977). “The farewell party”, Viking Pr

  11 Copy quote

• Most people willingly deceive themselves with a doubly false faith; they believe in eternal memory (of men, things, deeds, peoples) and in rectification (of deeds, errors, sins, injustice). Both are sham. The truth lies at the opposite end of the scale: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be rectified. All rectification (both vengeance and forgiveness) will be taken over by oblivion.

  Milan Kundera

  Memories, Lying, Believe

  8 Copy quote

• I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.

  Milan Kundera

  Intelligent, Thinking, Intellectual

  43 Copy quote

• To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.

  Milan Kundera

  Men, Able, Accepting

  5 Copy quote

• The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure.

  Milan Kundera

  Pleasure, Ambiguity, Greater

  12 Copy quote

• The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

  Milan Kundera

  Strength, Memories, Struggle

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

  30 Copy quote

• A man is responsible for his ignorance.

  Milan Kundera

  Ignorance, Men, Responsible

  13 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

• 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

• It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.

  Milan Kundera

  Maturity, Mind, Favors

  24 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

• We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded. We are permitted merely to sense and guess at what we are actually experiencing. Only later when the cloth is untied can we glance at the past and find out what we have experienced and what meaning it has.

  Milan Kundera

  Eye, Past, Glances

  63 Copy quote

• Happiness is the longing for repetition.

  Milan Kundera

  Happiness, Laughter, Joy

  31 Copy quote

• Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.

  Milan Kundera

  Country, Mean, Childhood

  5 Copy quote

• Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?

  Milan Kundera

  Men, Hatred, Certain

  40 Copy quote

• I understand you, and I shall not attempt to make you change your mind. I am too old to want to improve the world. I have told you what I think, and that is all. I shall remain your friend even if you act contrary to my convictions, and I shall help you even if I disagree with you.

  Milan Kundera

  Thinking, Mind, World

  "Farewell Waltz". Book by Milan Kundera, 1972.

  75 Copy quote

• There is no perfection only life

  Milan Kundera

  Perfection

  10 Copy quote

• A man able to think isn't defeated - even when he is defeated.

  Milan Kundera

  Men, Thinking, Able

  19 Copy quote

• Optimism is the opium of the people.

  Milan Kundera

  Optimistic, Optimism, People

  Milan Kundera (1983). “The Joke”, Viking Press

  27 Copy quote

• At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.

  Milan Kundera

  Love Is, Ends, True Love Is

  9 Copy quote

• Sad company is bad company.

  Milan Kundera

  Bad Company, Company

  "The Farewell Waltz". Book by Milan Kundera, 1972.

  12 Copy quote

• On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

  Milan Kundera

  Lying, Chaos, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

  18 Copy quote

• Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.

  Milan Kundera

  Hate, Human Nature, Traps

  17 Copy quote

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