Václav Havel quotes - page 2

True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say. (Václav Havel)
Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
Václav Havel
The real test of a man is not when he plays the role that he wants for himself but when he plays the role destiny has for him.
Václav Havel
A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.
Václav Havel
Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals.
Václav Havel
When a person tries to act in accordance with his conscience, when he tries to speak the truth, when he tries to behave like a citizen, even in conditions where citizenship is degraded, it won't necessarily lead anywhere, but it might. There's one thing, however, that will never lead anywhere, and that is speculating that such behavior will lead somewhere.
Václav Havel
Without the constantly living and articulated experience of absurdity, there would be no reason to attempt to do something meaningful. And on the contrary, how can one experience one's own absurdity if one is not constantly seeking meaning?
Václav Havel
The cliché organizes life; it expropriates people's identity; it becomes ruler, defense lawyer, judge, and the law.
Václav Havel
Every concession gives rise to further concessions, we cannot back down, because behind us there is only an abyss, we must keep our promises and demand that they be kept.
Václav Havel
The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it.
Václav Havel
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. (Václav Havel)
Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred.
Václav Havel
Those that say that individuals are not capable of changing anything are only looking for excuses.
Václav Havel
If the world is to change for the better it must start with a change in human consciousness, in the very humanness of modern man.
Václav Havel
People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don't know where to go.
Václav Havel
A genuinely fundamental and hopeful improvement in "systems" cannot happen without a significant shift in human consciousness.
Václav Havel
Sober perseverance is more effective than enthusiastic emotions, which are all too capable of being transferred, with little difficulty, to something different each day.
Václav Havel
People, your government has returned to you!
Václav Havel
Self-confidence is not pride. Just the contrary: only a person or a nation that is self-confident, in the best sense of the word, is capable of listening to others, accepting them as equals, forgiving its enemies and regretting its own guilt.
Václav Havel
The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle.
Václav Havel
Let us admit that most of us writers feel an essential aversion to politics. By taking such a position, however, we accept the perverted principle of specialization, according to which some are paid to write about the horrors of the world and human responsibility and others to deal with those horrors and bear the human responsibility for them. (Václav Havel)
I believe that during the intervention of NATO in Kosovo there is an element nobody can question: the air attacks, the bombs, are not caused by a material interest. Their character is exclusively humanitarian: What is at stake here are the principles, human rights which have priority above state sovereignty. This makes it legitimate to attack the Yugoslav Federation, although without the United Nations mandate.
Václav Havel
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Václav Havel
Man is in fact nailed down - like Christ on the Cross - to a grid of paradoxes... he balances between the torment of not knowing his mission and the joy of carrying it out, between nothingness and meaningfulness. And like Christ, he is in fact victorious by virtue of his defeats.
Václav Havel
It's not true that you should first think up an idea for a better world and only then "put it into practice," but, rather, through the fact of your existence in the world, you create the idea or manifest it - create it, as it were, from the "material of the world," articulate it in the "language of the world."
Václav Havel