Milan Kundera


A long time ago a certain Cynic philosopher proudly paraded around Athens in a moth-eaten coat, hoping that everyone would admire his contempt for convention. When Socrates met him, he said: Through the hole in your coat I see your vanity. Your dirt, too, dear sir, is self-indulgent and your self-indulgence is dirty

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine

Kitsch is the inability to admit that shit exists

The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty

If high culture is coming to an end, it is also the end of you and your paradoxical ideas, because paradox as such belongs to high culture and not to childish prattle. You remind me of the young men who supported the Nazis or communists not out of cowardice or out of opportunism but out of an excess of intelligence. For nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of nonthought… You are the brilliant ally of your own gravediggers





 

There are no small parts. Only small actors