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Our historical experience teaches us that men imitate one another, that their attitudes are statistically calculable, their opinions manipulable, and that man is therefore less an individual (a subject) than an element in a mass.

Milan Kundera

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Milan Kundera
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: April 1
Author
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Brünn
Opinion
Opinions
Teach
Historical
Less
Subject
Calculable
Individual
Elements
Statistically
Experience
Mass
Imitate
Another
Therefore
Attitudes
Men
Subjects
Teaches
Attitude
Element

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If I had two lives, in one life I could invite her to stay at my place, and in the second life I could kick her out. Then I could compare and see which had been the best thing to do. But we only live once. Life's so light. Like an outline we can't ever fill in or correct... make any better. It's frightening.
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God has been kind to dogs in no putting a sense of beauty into their heads.
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Only after a while did it occur to me (in spite of the chilly silence which surrounded me) that my story was not of the tragic sort, but rather of the comic variety. At any rate that afforded me some comfort.
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The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.
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Business only has two functions - innovation and marketing.
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But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?
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Until that time, her betrayals had filled her with excitement and joy, because they opened up new paths to new adventures of betrayal. But what if the paths came to an end? One could betray one's parents, husband, country, love, but when parents, husband, country, and love were gone - what was left to betray?
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I understood that there was no escaping the memories, that I was surround by them. (p.30)
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No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, or the Reatles' White Album?
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a man possessed with peace is always smiling
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A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.
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Even in the game there lurks a lack of freedom even in a game is a trap for the players.
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Believe me, nothing is more beautiful than to carry out crazy ideas. I'd like my whole life to be one single crazy idea.
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Beauty has long since disappeared. It has slipped beneath the surface of the noise, the noise of words, sunk deep as Atlantis. The only thing left of it is the word, whose meaning loses clarity from year to year.
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The moment Kafka attracts more attenetion than Joseph K., Kafka's posthumous death begins.
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Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.
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She regarded books as the emblems of secret brotherhood. A man with this sort of library couldn't possibly hurt her.
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She knew that there were all kinds of ways to make a conquest and that one of the surest roads to a woman's genitals was through her sadness.
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Ah, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.
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Jealousy has the amazing power to illuminate a single person in an intense beam of light, keeping the multitude of others in total darkness.
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