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. – Milan Kundera
Mankinds true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it. – Milan Kundera
There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even ones own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos. – Milan Kundera
Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress. – Milan Kundera
Americas downgrade may serve as a wakeup call for its policymakers. It is an unambiguous and loud signal of the countrys eroding economic strength and global standing. It renders urgent the need to regain the initiative through better economic policymaking and more coherent governance. – Mohamed El-Erian