A Kidnapped West Quotes

“A vandál az a büszke szűklátókörűség, amely beéri önmagával és kész bármelyik pillanatban a jogait követelni. A büszke szűklátókörűség azt gondolja, hogy az elidegeníthetetlen jogai közé tartozik az is, hogy a saját képére formálja a világot, és mivel a világ nagyobbrészt olyasmiből áll, ami meghaladja őt, miközben a saját képére formálja a világot, elpusztítja azt.”
― Milan Kundera, Un Occidente prigioniero o la tragedia dell'Europa centrale

“There is no great difference between legal and illegal destruction, just as there is none between destruction and prohibition. A member of parliament recently demanded, in the name of twenty-one deputies, the banning of two major Czech films, both difficult. One of them — what an irony—that allegory of vandalism, Daisies. Unabashed, he attacked the two films readily admitting, his exact words, that he hadn’t understood them. The illogic of his complaint only seems obvious. The worst crime he charged to the two cinematic works is just that: by surpassing their judges’ capacities, the works had offended them. In a letter to Helvétius, Voltaire wrote this magnificent line: I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Here you have the articulation of the basic ethical principle of our modern culture. He who regresses into history before the birth of that one principle, thereby abandons the Enlightenment and returns to the Middle Ages. Any repression of an opinion, even the brutal repression of wrong opinions, essentially goes against the truth—that truth that is found only by setting free and equal opinions one against the other. Any interference in freedoms of thought and of expression, whatever the means or the title of that censorship, is in the twentieth century a scandal as well as a heavy burden for our effervescent young literature.”
― Milan Kundera, A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe