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Fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil.

— Milan Kundera Testaments Betrayed (1995)

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Good and Evil

More quotes by Milan Kundera

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.

The Joke (1967)

In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

All Milan Kundera quotes →

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False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Socrates

I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

Edward Teller

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

Henry David Thoreau Walden (1854)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Milan Kundera (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.