Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 2

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

  Milan Kundera

  Intelligent, Thinking, Intellectual

  43 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

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

  Milan Kundera

  Mean, Ignorance, Ideas

  10 Copy quote

• Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.

  Milan Kundera

  Inspirational, Funny, Ambition

  23 Copy quote

• A man is responsible for his ignorance.

  Milan Kundera

  Ignorance, Men, Responsible

  13 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

• 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

• 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

• The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.

  Milan Kundera

  Horse, Men, Order

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1884.

  10 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

• 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

• Believe me, nothing is more beautiful than to carry out crazy ideas. I'd like my whole life to be one single crazy idea.

  Milan Kundera

  Beautiful, Crazy, Believe

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

  4 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

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

  Milan Kundera

  Knowing, Giving, Emotion

  22 Copy quote

• Happiness is the longing for repetition.

  Milan Kundera

  Happiness, Laughter, Joy

  31 Copy quote

• Optimism is the opium of the people.

  Milan Kundera

  Optimistic, Optimism, People

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

  27 Copy quote

• Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.

  Milan Kundera

  Rain, Fall, Self

  41 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

• Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).

  Milan Kundera

  Love, Sleep, Passion

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

  70 Copy quote

• Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.

  Milan Kundera

  Dream, Communication, Games

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

  83 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

• 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

• Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.

  Milan Kundera

  Questions And Answers, Serious, Naive

  "Nesnesitelna lehkost byti (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

  10 Copy quote

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