A Quote by Milan Kundera

On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

Milan Kundera

Quote Topics

Intelligible Lie Surface Truth Underneath Unintelligible

Quote Author

Milan Kundera
Czechoslovakian - Writer
Born: April 1, 1929

I think one thing with Sweden is that in some way the Swedish society is a very good society, almost perfect on the surface. That is something that makes the writers forced to see what is underneath the surface, because it's always something underneath the surface, of course.

Alexander Ahndoril

All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Glorify a lie, legalize a lie, arm and equip a lie, consecrate a lie with solemn forms and awful penalties, and after all it is nothing but a lie. It rots a land and corrupts a people like any other lie, and by and by the white light of God's truth shines clear through it, and shows it to be a lie.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

It is only after you have come to know the surface of things ... that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible.

Italo Calvino

Among other common lies, we have the silent lie - the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all.

Mark Twain

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world - and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end - is being destroyed.

Hannah Arendt

As an actor, what's interesting is what's hidden away beneath the surface. You want to be like a duck on a pond - very calm on the surface but paddling away like crazy underneath.

Alexander Skarsgard

If you just take the time to look, then yeah, you will find some really great music in Holland. Just scratch the surface and look underneath the corporate surface.

Eddy de Clercq

Sometimes people are layered like that. There's something totally different underneath than what's on the surface. But sometimes, there's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie.

Joss Whedon

When we interpret nature, we refer phenomena that are rarely entirely unintelligible back to something that actually exists, but is equally unintelligible.

Franz Grillparzer

I think we need a politics that allows us to risk what is intelligible. To be maybe slightly unintelligible, too be slightly "illisible". To take the risk of suggesting that the human form might take another form.

Judith Butler

What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love.

Lady Gaga

The girls said she was too cynical about love, but how could you not be? On the surface, relations between men and women were all soft kisses and white gowns and hand-holding. But underneath they were a scary, complicated, ugly mess, just waiting to rise to the surface.