Milan Kundera Quotes

384 quotes in 4625 categories

• Extremism means borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.
• Common European thought is the fruit of the immense toil of translators. Without translators, Europe would not exist; translators are more important than members of…
• The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.
• The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.
• 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,…
• Mankind's real moral test, a test so radical and so deep that it escapes our gaze, is probably the one of its relations with those…
• We go through the present blindfolded... Only later, when the blindfold is removed and we examine the past, do we realize what we've been through…
• Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.
• Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.
• The combination of a frivolous form and a serious subject immediately unmasks the truth about our dramas.
• La memoria no guarda películas, guarda fotografías.
• Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.
• In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.
• The rediscovered path, where were left the traces of childhood's lost steps.
• Children are the future, because mankind is moving more and more towards infancy.
• Her kitsch was the image of home, all peace, quiet, and harmony, and ruled by a loving mother and a wise father. It was an…
• How did the senator know that children meant happiness? Could he see into their souls? What if the moment they were out of sight, three…
• At a time when history made its way slowly, the few events were easily remembered and woven into a backdrop, known to everyone, before which…
• Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence.
• As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom.

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