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Milan Kundera Quotes about Memories

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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)

Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.

Memories, Doe, Film

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

Strength, Memories, Struggle

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

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.

Memories, Lying, Believe

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.

Memories, Shadow, Empires

[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.

Memories, Burden, Collapse

The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful ... Love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

Beautiful, Memories, Brain

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

There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.

Memories, Secret, Forget

The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

Memories, Degrees, Forget

Children, Never look Back!" and this meant that we must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory . for children have no past, and that is the whole secret of the magical innocence of their smiles.

Memories, Children, Past

To ensure that the self doesn't shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends.

Friendship, Memories, Flower

The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history.

Memories, Book, People

Such are the Splendors and Miseries of memory: it is proud of its ability to keep truthful track of the logical sequence of past events; but when it comes to how we experienced them at the time, memory feels no obligation to truth.

Memories, Past, Track

The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten.

Memories, War, People

"The Book of Laughter and Forgetting". Book by Milan Kundera, 1979.

Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

Love, Dream, Memories

Remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it.

Memories, Flower, Past

This is the real and the only reason for friendship: to provide a mirror so the other person can contemplate his image from the past, which, without the eternal blah-blah of memories between pals, would long ago have disappeared.

Memories, Real, Past

"Identity". Book by Milan Kundera, 1998.

In Irena’s head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, makes her sensual, and at the same time it dims her memory. She makes love wildly, lasciviously, and at the same time the curtain of oblivion wraps her lewdness in an all-concealing darkness. As if a poet were writing his greatest poem with ink that instantly disappears.

Memories, Writing, Play

I understood that there was no escaping the memories, that I was surround by them. (p.30)

Memories, Escaping, Understood

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