Milan Kundera - Human Quotes

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The fact that until recently the word shit appeared in print as s— has nothing to do with moral considerations. You can't claim that shit is immoral, after all! The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of Creation. … The aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch. … Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.

Milan Kundera
None among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely. No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.

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

Milan Kundera
For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?

Milan Kundera
Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the view­point of the novel's wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil.

Milan Kundera
The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists' discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.

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

Milan Kundera