Milan Kundera Quotes

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

How do we describe the fact of human existence? At a certain point, perhaps, style fails us. Language, even and in particular at its most evocative, becomes less of an aid and more of a difficulty.

The human condition is the human condition, and what we try to do is illuminate the human condition.

The human condition is endlessly fascinating to me, and the existential horrors of life are what drive our imaginations and theater in general.

I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.

If I had to summarize, most broadly, my concerns as a writer, I'd say the question 'How then must we live?' is at the heart of it, for me.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

Philosophy means nothing unless it is connected to birth, death, and the continuance of life. Anytime you are going to build a society that works, you have to begin from nature and the body.

What Shakespeare and the Greeks were able to do was radically question what it meant to be a human being.

Initially, I studied philosophy, because it claimed to give you answers to the meaning of existence, but it didn't: It was basically a semantics game.

Man - a being in search of meaning.

The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

The two basic topics which fascinate me are 'What is reality?' and 'What constitutes the authentic human being?'

Literature hasn't come up with any new themes. The literature of all different times - it's still dealing with how one resolves issues of existence.

If I want to read something that's really giving me something serious and fundamental to think about, about the human condition, if you like, or what we're all doing here, or what's going on, then I'd rather read something by a scientist in the life sciences, like Richard Dawkins, for instance.

I really believe that 'Saw' makes us stop and think and question our motives and what we're doing here on Earth.

Science, it is said, no doubt has ameliorated the material conditions of human life, but is powerless to solve those moral and philosophical questions that interest cultured people so deeply.

It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.

We breathe, we think, we conceive of our lives as narratives.

The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.

I read 'The Conspiracy Against the Human Race' and found it incredibly powerful writing. For me as a reader, it was less impactful as philosophy than as one writer's ultimate confessional: an absolute horror story, where the self is the monster.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.