Quotes by Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera

Tsjech writer and criticus

Lived from: 1929 - 2023

Category: Media | Writers (Contemporary) Country: FlagCzech Republic

Born: 1 april 1929 Died: 11 july 2023

  • I feel a frantic desire to free myself. To start all over again and in another way.
  • Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.

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  • Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards 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.
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  • Optimism is the opium of the people.
    ― Milan Kundera
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  • A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.
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  • A worker may be the hammer's master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea.
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  • All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.
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  • At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.
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  • Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent.
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  • Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.
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  • For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?
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  • Happiness is the longing for repetition.
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  • I feel a frantic desire to free myself. To start all over again and in another way.
    Farewell Waltz (1976)
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  • I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.
    ― Milan Kundera
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  • Immortality is a ridiculous illusion, an empty word, a butterfly net chasing the wind.
    De grap (1967)
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  • Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.
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  • Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray.
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  • Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.
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  • Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.
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  • Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight.
    ― Milan Kundera
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  • No act is of itself either good or bad. Only its place in the order of things makes it good or bad.
    De grap (1967)
    ― Milan Kundera
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  • No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.
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Questions and Answers

What are the most famous quotes from Milan Kundera?

The two most famous quotes from Milan Kundera are:

  • "Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards 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."
  • "Optimism is the opium of the people."

When did Milan Kundera live?

Milan Kundera was born in 1929 and died in the year 2023.