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Milan Kundera Quotes

All Quotes Adventure Age Ambition Art Attitude Beauty Betrayal Brotherhood Certainty Character Childhood Children Choices Coincidence Compassion Culture Darkness Desire Doubt Drama Evil Fashion Feelings Film Funny Giving Goodness Happiness Hatred Heart Home Hurt Imagination Immortality Inspirational Joy Judgment Laughter Life Love Lying Memories Metaphor Morality Morning Nostalgia Passion Past Pleasure Reality Running Sadness Sleep Soul Struggle Stupidity Suffering Today Understanding Violence War Water Writing

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

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.

Memories, Struggle, Book

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

Aren't we living in a world where heedless men only desire decapitated women?

Men, Desire, World

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.

Inspirational, Time, Freedom

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

People, Liberty, World

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

People, Stupidity, Answers

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

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.

Dirty, Wine, People

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

Inspirational, Heart, Mind

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

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

Beautiful, Crazy, Believe

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

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.

Past, People, Political

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

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.

Letting Go, Dog, Stress

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

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.

Age, Moments, Certain

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

Mean, Greek, Suffering

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

Eye, Infinity, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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

Order, Life Is, Longing

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

Beauty is a rebellion against time.

Rebellion

Modern stupidity means not ignorance but the nonthought of received ideas

Mean, Ignorance, Ideas

People fascinated by the idea of progress never suspect that every step forward is also a step on the way to the end.

Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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.

Men, Able, Accepting

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

Lying, Worry, Anxiety

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

Love, Two, Numbers

"Identity". Book by Milan Kundera, 1998.

Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.

Memories, Doe, Film

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

Answers, Kitsch, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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

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

Lying, People, Ability

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

Knowing, Giving, Emotion

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.

Dream, Reflection, Mirrors

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