Milan Kundera is an important Czech poet, playwright and novelist born in 1929 . This important writer has lived in France since 1975, from which he adopted his citizenship in 1987.

Milan Kundera’s life would give to write a book about him: he was a jazz pianist, a member of the communist party, persecuted by the Soviet regime and a never ending adventure. During his career as a writer he wrote works of great importance in the society of that time, such as The Joke, The Book of Laughter and Oblivion or The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

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Milan Kundera’s Best Quotes and Famous Quotations

As readers we must all have read one of his books at some point and if not this is a good time to do so. Below, we present you 80 very interesting sentences by Milan Kundera , so that you can get to know a little more about this writer.

1. There is only one thing that separates us from jazz. Jazz develops and changes quickly.

Just like in jazz we must know how to improvise easily.

2. Jazz has a totally particular melody, in which the original six-tone scale of the old black chants is evident. But also our popular song has its particular melody, tonality even more varied.

Jazz is a style of music that has its own particularities.

3. It would be so easy to find calm in the world of imagination. But I have always tried to live in both worlds at the same time and not to abandon one of them because of the other.

Our thoughts are largely a good part of us who live in two worlds at once: the real and the imaginary.

4. But Luther says in a letter: true love is often unjust.

Just because we love someone doesn’t mean that that love is returned.

5. It craves the strength of the hunter who hunts a tiger and not the fame of the tiger admired by those who will use it as a carpet at the foot of their bed.

In life, our willpower is much more important than undeserved fame.

6. There are so many more dead than alive!

Unfortunately, death is an inevitable moment in the lives of all of us.

7. I have found a beautiful proverb: true love is always right, even if it is unjust.

No logic can defeat love.

8. It’s not faith I’m talking about. It’s images, ideas. I don’t know why I should get rid of them.

Having faith in our ideas is something that can be very positive, we must believe in them.

9. Man must first of all have the courage to be himself.

Indeed, we must know how to express ourselves in our whole being.

10. He liked Bach, because he still understood music as a transparent combination of independent voices, each of which can be recognized.

The conception of music through the ideas of the old masters is very different from how jazz musicians understand it.

11. The manufacturing number of the human specimen is the face, that casual and unrepeatable grouping of features. Neither the character, nor the soul, nor that which we call the “I” is reflected in it. The face is only the number of the specimen.

Beauty does not dictate who we really are, we can be more beautiful or uglier, but that will not affect our personality.

12. Yes, the essence of all love is the child and it does not matter if it was conceived or born. In the algebra of love, the son is the magical sign of the sum of two beings.

The vital objective of every living being is, after all, simple: to reproduce.

13. I have the firm will to love you until eternity.

Love is a force that can live in us forever.

14. It may be that only in exceptional circumstances are we aware of our age and that most of the time we are not old at all.

The age we possess only affects us in certain aspects of our life, outside of them, the age we have is indifferent.

15. The meaning of poetry is not to dazzle us with a surprising idea, but to make an instant of being unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.

Poetry can turn the most superfluous aspect of life into something worth remembering.

16. He only became sexual during brief exceptional moments, when an instant of excitement irradiated him with an unreal, artificial light, and made him desirable and beautiful.

The excitement of the moment, can lead us to see a person differently than how we see them in another situation of the day.

17. I think, therefore I exist, is the comment of an intellectual who underestimates toothache.

As we see in this quote, Kundera, makes a little mockery of the work of the famous French philosopher René Descartes.

18. What does it really mean to be useful? The sum of the usefulness of all people in all ages is fully contained in the world as it is today. From this it follows: nothing is more moral than being useless.

Today’s society, indeed, has serious problems of morality and decay.

19. “I am not worthy of my suffering. A great line. From it we can see that suffering is not only the basis of the “I”, its only undoubted ontological proof, but that it is also of all feelings that it deserves the greatest respect: the value of all values.

As sentient beings, logically we sometimes suffer and therefore we are worthy of some moral respect.

20. Imagine living in a world where there are no mirrors. You would dream of your face and imagine it as an external reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you were forty, someone would put a mirror in front of you for the first time in your life. Imagine the fright! You’d see a completely strange face. And you would know clearly what you cannot understand: your face is not you.

Indeed our physical appearance does not dictate who we really are, who we really are is only decided by our daily actions.

21. Culture succumbs under the volume of production, the avalanche of letters, the madness of quantity. That’s why I tell you that a book that’s banned in your country means infinitely more than the millions of words that our universities throw up.

As a writer Kundera was morally obliged to produce quality works. In today’s world of consumerism, we must not be driven by the desire for material goods.

22. For everything in this world is forgiven beforehand, and therefore everything is cynically permitted.

All acts should not be forgiven, we must know when something is not acceptable.

23. But it is precisely the weak who must be strong and know how to leave when the strong are too weak to be able to harm the weak.

Those who are “weaker” in life must strive more proportionally, therefore, prove to be stronger.

24. It is not necessity, but chance, that is full of charms. If love is to be unforgettable, coincidences must fly to it from the first moment.

Many times we fall in love with someone by chance, that’s the beauty of love: we don’t decide who we fall in love with.

25. The heaviest burden destroys us, we are knocked down by it, it crushes us against the earth. But in the love poetry of all ages, woman wishes to carry the weight of man’s body. The heaviest burden is therefore, at the same time, the image of the most intense fullness of life. The heavier the burden, the more earthy our life will be, the more real and true it will be.

Life can be painful on many occasions, but in the same way it can also be very beautiful and intense.

26. When she was little, her father taught her to play chess. She had noticed a move called castling: the player changes the position of two figures in one move: he puts the rook next to the king and moves the king to the corner, next to the place the rook used to occupy. He liked that move: the enemy concentrates all his effort on threatening the king and the king suddenly disappears before his eyes; he goes to live somewhere else. She had dreamed all her life of that movement, and dreamed of it all the more as she became more tired.

Castling is a move that allows us to run away and defend ourselves at the same time, a move that we all want to make in more than one life situation.

27. Despite my scepticism, I have some superstition left. For example, this strange conviction that all the stories that happen in life also have a meaning, mean something. That life, with its own history, says something about itself, that it gradually reveals to us some of its secrets, that it stands before us like a riddle that needs to be solved.

Many of us believe in the figure of destiny, that there is something we are destined or born for.

28. Men want to own the future just so they can change the past. They struggle to enter the laboratory where photographs are retouched and biographies and history are rewritten.

In life we struggle to define who we are, to teach those around us what we are capable of.

29. Children are not the future because one day they will be grown up, but because humanity will get closer and closer to the child, because childhood is the image of the future.

Everything that humanity will achieve in the future depends solely and exclusively on today’s children.

30. Women don’t look for beautiful men. Women are looking for men who have had beautiful women. That’s why having an ugly lover is a fatal mistake.

Both men and women look for beauty in their partner, because that beauty means that we are also beautiful to deserve it. In the same way, beauty is something subjective, each person has their own version of what beauty is.

31. Loves are like empires: when the idea on which they have been built disappears, they too perish.

Both men and empires, the passing of the years wreaks havoc on them, leading them undoubtedly to their demise.

32. The twilight of disappearance bathes everything with the magic of nostalgia.

When something disappears from the world, the memory of it leads us to miss it. Nostalgia is always an emotion that comes too late.

33. There is nothing heavier than understanding. Not even pain itself is so heavy that pain felt, by someone, for someone, multiplied by imagination, prolonged in a thousand echoes.

Not all of us are capable of feeling the pain of others, of having enough empathy for it.

34. Love, by definition, is an undeserved gift.

Love is something we neither deserve nor do we cease to deserve, we simply do not have control over it.

35. The true goodness of man can only manifest itself with absolute cleanliness and freedom in relation to those who do not represent any force.

Indeed, in order to demonstrate our true goodness, we must exercise it on the one who causes us no good, nor any evil.

36. He erased it from the photograph of his life, not because he did not love it, but precisely because he loved it. He erased it along with the love he felt for her.

When we love someone and lose them, forgetting about that person can be an arduous task.

37. The unhappy man seeks comfort in the amalgamation of his grief with the grief of another.

We should not rejoice in the sorrow of others to lessen our own, as the saying goes: evil of others, comfort of fools.

38. Eroticism is like dance: one part of the couple always manages the other.

With our way of acting and our actions, we can predispose a reaction in our partner, whether in the sexual field or in any other.

39. I dare say that there is no authentic eroticism without the art of ambiguity; when ambiguity is powerful, the more vivid the excitement.

Eroticism is the art of awakening in the other person a certain sexual desire, starting from an initial ambiguity.

40. Excitement is the foundation of eroticism, its deepest enigma, its key word.

When we are excited, our actions and thoughts are the result or perhaps the consequence of that emotion.

41. Happiness is the longing for repetition.

When we are happy living an experience, we always want to repeat it.

42. Love does not manifest itself in the desire to go to bed with someone, but in the desire to sleep next to someone.

As this quote rightly says, sleeping with someone is one thing and sleeping with that person is another.

43. The true test of humanity’s morality, the deepest test (situated at such a depth that it escapes our perception), lies in its relationship with those who are at its mercy: the animals.

Animals are sentient living beings, which consequently deserve all our love and respect.

44. The nostalgia for paradise, is the desire of man not to be man.

Paradise is a utopian idea that is impossible to achieve, but that is why it is so attractive.

45. I write for the pleasure of contradicting and for the happiness of being alone against everyone.

No doubt Kundera was aware of his unique personality and at times felt perhaps a little removed from society.

46. Man can never know what he should want, because he lives only one life and has no way of comparing it with his previous lives or of amending it in his later lives. There is no possibility of checking which of the decisions is the best, because there is no comparison. Man lives everything at first sight and without preparation. But what value can life have if the first rehearsal for living is already life itself?

We learn what we want to achieve and how we should achieve it, over time and as a result of the experience of the situations we live in.

47. He who seeks infinity, let him close his eyes.

We all possess an inner world that can be as rich as our imagination allows.

48. The struggle of the human being against power is the struggle of memory against oblivion.

To avoid making the same mistakes, we must remember where we came from.

49. All great novels, real novels, are bisexual.

All types of sexuality should be respected equally, as today’s society is still struggling for sexual freedoms.

50. Coquetry is a proposal of sex without guarantee.

A very curious way of understanding this attitude, had you ever thought in a similar way?

51. Life is the memory of the people, the collective consciousness of historical continuity, the way of thinking and living.

Indeed, “real life” is the result of the sum of how we live and how we think.

52. Speed is the form of ecstasy that the technical revolution has brought to man.

Technologically, human civilization is constantly advancing, and it is advancing at an ever-increasing speed.

53. In such a world in which everything is counted, the most easily accessible and yet most deadly weapon is disclosure.

We can do a lot of harm to someone by spreading their ideas and thoughts.

54. Without knowing it, man composes his life according to the laws of beauty, even in moments of deepest despair.

Unfortunately, we are largely driven by appearances, something that we should certainly change in society.

55. He despises literature in which authors give away all their intimacies and those of their friends. The person who loses his intimacy loses everything.

We must know what things we can tell and what things are better not to tell, our most personal issues must not be aired.

56. Solitude: a sweet absence of glances.

Loneliness is something that no person wants for themselves.

57. Everything depends on man being as he is, on not being ashamed to want what he wants and to desire what he desires. People are often slaves to ordinances.

Being consistent with ourselves will allow us to achieve our life goals.

58. All the basic situations of life are without return. For man to be a man, he must go through the impossibility of return with full consciousness.

As we move forward in life we leave behind incorrect attitudes and ways of thinking.

59. Man can expect a woman to do anything, but if he does not want to behave like a savage, he must make it possible for her to act in accordance with his deepest fictions.

As men we must always act honestly, whether we are dealing with women or other men.

60. He had always lived in two worlds simultaneously. I had believed in their mutual harmony. It was a deception. Now he had been expelled from one of those worlds. The real world. All I have left is my imagination.

We must know how to live in the society where we are, thoughts can be something very important but they should not be 100 percent of our life.

61. In front of her I could afford everything: even sincerity, feeling and pathos.

The person who truly loves us will do so completely, with our strengths and our weaknesses.

62. I understood that I could not run away from the memories; that I was surrounded by them.

Memories are a fundamental part of us and will accompany us throughout our lives.

63. We often speak of love at first sight; I know perfectly well that love tends to make a legend of itself and to mythicize its beginnings in retrospect; I do not intend, therefore, to say that it was such a sudden love; but what there was was a certain clairvoyance: the essence of Lucie’s being – or to be more precise – the essence of what Lucie was for me afterwards, I understood it, I felt it, I saw it immediately and at once; Lucie brought me to herself as revealed truths are brought to people.

Some people have experienced love at first sight, and Milan Kundera is among those people.

64. The supporters of joy are usually the saddest.

We all want to feel joy in our lives, but sometimes it can be elusive.

65. Optimism is the opium of the people! The healthy spirit reeks of idiocy. Long live Trotsky! Ludvik.

Milan Kundera, was not a big fan of Leon Trotsky’s ideas.

66. Because living in a world where nothing is forgiven to anyone, where no one can redeem himself, is the same as living in hell.

Forgiveness is something we can achieve, but it will depend on the action we have taken before.

67. He didn’t have, like the hypocrites, a real face and false faces. I had several faces because I was young and I didn’t know who I was and who I wanted to be.

When we have not developed as people, we tend to flirt with various attitudes to find which one we are most comfortable with.

68. This time he added to his speech new ideas: the class enemy had managed to penetrate directly into the Communist party; but spies and traitors should have known that masked enemies would be treated a hundred times worse than those who did not hide their opinions, because the masked enemy is a mangy dog.

We must certainly be consistent with our own ideas, for they largely determine who we really are.

69. To be mortal is the most essential human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept, understand, and behave in accordance with it. Man does not know how to be mortal. And when he dies he does not even know how to be dead.

Many times we are not fully aware of the risks we run, we go through life believing ourselves to be immortal beings.

70. How can one live in a world with which one does not agree? How can one live with people if one does not consider their sorrows and joys as his own? If you know you are not part of them.

In order to be completely happy we will have to find our place in the world, for this we will have to know what we want from life and how we will achieve it.

71. Because that’s the only real life for me: living in someone else’s thoughts. If not, I am dead in life.

We would all like to know what others are thinking, this is a very recurrent thought in all men and women.

72. Love or the convent: two ways in which man can reject the divine computer, two ways to escape from it.

A very curious way of understanding life, in the end we all want to escape in some way.

73. Living, there is no happiness in that. To live: to take his suffering self through the world. But to be, to be is happiness. To be: to become a source, a vessel of stone on which the universe falls like a warm rain.

In order to be happy, we must know how to represent our best version and show it to the world.

74. Life is for you a conditioned value, which is justified only because it allows you to live your love. He whom you love is for you more than divine Creation, more than life.

Love is a very powerful force, which can greatly limit or enhance our actions in life.

75. Man is nothing but his image. Philosophers can tell us that what the world thinks of us is irrelevant, that it is only worth what we are. But philosophers do not understand anything. As long as we live with people, we are no more than what people think we are.

Society is largely governed by the image we show it, our image will allow us to receive better attitudes from others towards us.

76. Thinking about how others see us and trying to make our image as sympathetic as possible is considered a kind of fallacy or trickery. But is there any direct relationship between my “I” and theirs without the mediation of the eyes?

The pre-established canons of beauty, give us in a “simple” way an explanation of what others wish to observe.

77. Unfortunately, we are missing Descartes. That is an unforgivable shortcoming in our history. Germany does not have a tradition of reason and clarity, it is full of metaphysical fogs and Wagnerian music and we all know who was Wagner’s greatest admirer: Hitler!

In this quotation Kundera attacks the German society of the time, which caused the writer himself a great deal of grief.

78. The basis of modesty is not our error, but the opprobrium, the humiliation we feel for having to be what we are without having chosen it, and the unbearable feeling that this humiliation is seen from all sides.

We must be grateful for the person we are and what we represent in society. To achieve happiness we must first accept ourselves.

79. I cannot hate them because nothing binds me to them; I have nothing to do with them.

We cannot hate that which we do not know; hatred is a very visceral emotion that comes from the previous offence suffered by us.

80. The danger of hatred is that it binds us to the adversary in a tight embrace.

Indeed, when we enter into a spiral of hatred, we are always involved in situations with that person we hate so much.