“Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.”

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Only the most naive of questions are truly serious." by Milan Kundera?
Milan Kundera photo
Milan Kundera 198
Czech author of Czech and French literature 1929–2023

Related quotes

Albert Camus photo

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”

The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays by Albert Camus, An Absurd Reasoning : Absurdity and Suicide p. 3 (1942, 1955)
Absurdity and Suicide
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning
Context: There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect. If I ask myself how to judge that this question is more urgent than that, I reply that one judges by the actions it entails. I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument.

Tom Robbins photo
Everett Dean Martin photo

“Common men cherish their naive faiths and ask no questions.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 85

Rihanna photo

“People ask me the most naive questions. Someone asked me if we have indoor toilets. I can't get upset. They just don't know.”

Rihanna (1988) Barbadian singer, songwriter, and actress

On the world's lack of knowledge about her native island, Barbados. Allure magazine, January 2008.

Carl Sagan photo
Peter F. Drucker photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“Who would fill the contribution boxes and plates, and who (most serious of all questions) would pay the salaries?”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.
Context: These “worldly” people have cleared the forests, plowed the land, built the cities, the steamships, the telegraphs, and have produced all there is of worth and wonder in the world. Yet the preachers denounce them. Were it not for “worldly” people how would the preachers get along? Who would build the churches? Who would fill the contribution boxes and plates, and who (most serious of all questions) would pay the salaries?

Thorstein Veblen photo

“The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.”

Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) American academic

Veblen (1908) The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View, University of California Chronicle

Alan Watts photo
Pierre-Simon Laplace photo

“The most important questions of life… are indeed for the most part only problems of probability.”

Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)
Context: The most important questions of life... are indeed for the most part only problems of probability. Strictly speaking it may even be said that nearly all our knowledge is problematical; and in the small number of things which we are able to know with certainty, even in the mathematical sciences themselves, the principal means for ascertaining truth—induction and analogy—are based on probabilities.<!--p.1

Related topics