1,075 Quotes by Milan Kundera

When we study, discuss, analyze a reality, we analyze it as it appears in our mind, in our memory. We know reality only in the past tense. We do not know it as it is in the present, in the moment when it's happening, when it is. The present moment is unlike the memory of it. Remembering is not the negative of forgetting. Remembering is a form of forgetting.[...] We die without knowing what we have lived.

In existential mathematics that experience takes the form of two basic equations: The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

The assassination of Allende quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Bohemia, the bloody massacre in Bangladesh caused Allende to be forgotten, the din of war in the Sinai Desert drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the massacres in Cambodia caused the Sinai to be forgotten, and so on, and on and on, until everyone has completely forgotten everything.

A value debased and an illusion unmasked have the same pitiful shell.

vivre dans la vérité, ne mentir ni à soi-même ni aux autres, ce n'est possible qu'à la condition de vivre sans public. Dès lors qu'il y a un témoin à nos actes, nous nous adaptons bon gré mal gré aux yeux qui nous observent, et plus rien de ce que nous faisons n'est vrai. Avoir un public, penser à un public, c'est vivre dans le mensonge (partie III, ch. 7)

That conversation with the taxi driver suddenly made clear to me the essence of the writer's occupation. We write books because our children aren't interested in us. We address ourselves to an anonymous world because our wives plug their ears when we speak to them.

Die deutsche Sprache ist die Sprache der schweren Wörter

Porque el joven era consciente a veces de que el mundo en que vive es un laberinto de valores cuya importancia intuye apenas vagamente y que, por lo tanto, sólo pueden dejar de ser valores aparentes y convertirse en valores reales cuando hayan sido confirmados

But the people who struggle against what we call totalitarian regimes cannot function with queries and doubts. They, too, need certainties and simple truths to make the multitudes understand, to provoke collective tears.