Milan Kundera Quotes

93 Sourced Quotes

No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.

Milan Kundera
The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel.

Milan Kundera
A man able to think isn't defeated—even when he is defeated.

Milan Kundera
And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?

Milan Kundera
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

Milan Kundera
Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view) consists of its attitudes towards those who are at its mercy: animals.

Milan Kundera
Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect some day to suffer vertigo.

Milan Kundera
Whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch. When I say totalitarian, what I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because a deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood); every doubt (because anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself); all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously); and the mother who abandons her family or the man who prefers men to women, thereby calling into question the holy decree Be fruitful and multiply.

Milan Kundera
Love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

Milan Kundera
I can't shake off the idea that after death you keep being alive. That to be dead is to live an endless nightmare.

Milan Kundera
The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude.

Milan Kundera
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.

Milan Kundera
But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

Milan Kundera
If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.

Milan Kundera
It was the call of all those fortuities... which gave her the courage to leave home and change her fate.

Milan Kundera
Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.

Milan Kundera
The proliferation of mass graphomania among politicians, cab drivers, women on the delivery table, mistresses, murderers, criminals, prostitutes, police chiefs, doctors, and patients proves to me that every individual without exception bears a potential writer within himself and that all mankind has every right to rush out into the streets with a cry of "We are all writers!"
The reason is that everyone has trouble accepting the fact that he will disappear unheard of and unnoticed in an indifferent universe, and everyone wants to make himself into a universe of words before it's too late.
Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.

Milan Kundera
What makes a leftist a leftist is not this or that theory but his ability to integrate any theory into the kitsch called the Grand March.

Milan Kundera
Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together.

Milan Kundera
As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom.

Milan Kundera
For the first few seconds, she was afraid he would throw her out because of the crude noises she was making, but then he put his arms around her. She was grateful to him for ignoring her rumbles, and she kissed him passionately, her eyes misting.

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

Milan Kundera
The eye... the point where a person's identity is concentrated.

Milan Kundera
All of man's life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ears of others.

Milan Kundera
Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has its own reason, which is not reasonable.

Milan Kundera
The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen.

Milan Kundera
Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.

Milan Kundera
She said: "I get scared when my eye blinks. Scared that during that second when my gaze is switched off, a snake or a rat or another man could slip into your place."

Milan Kundera
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.

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

Milan Kundera