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Authors:
Vaclav Havel Quotes

Vaclav Havel quotes

Czechoslovakian Leader October 5, 1936 – December 18, 2011

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Quotes

... no one ever develops and achieves self-awareness in a vacuum, beyond all ears and systems. The period you grow up in and mature in always influences your thinking. This in itself requires no self-criticim. What is more important is how you have allowed yourself to be influenced, whether by good or by evil. Vaclav Havel
The kind of hope that I often think about…I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us, or we don’t. It is a dimension of the soul It’s not essentially dependent upon some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. Vaclav Havel
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed. Vaclav Havel
At one time, the state of culture in Czechoslovakia was described, rather poignantly, as a 'Biafra of the spirit'. . . I simply do not believe that we have all lain down and died. I see far more than graves and tombstones around me. I see evidence of this in . . . expensive books on astronomy printed in a hundred thousand copies (they would hardly find that many readers in the USA) . . . Vaclav Havel
Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance. Vaclav Havel
Vaclav Havel quote: "Work for something because it is good, not just because it..."
Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. Vaclav Havel
I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence. Vaclav Havel
The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility. Vaclav Havel
What's certain is that a totalitarian enclave like Cuba's can't continue to exist, so change will definitely come there, eventually. Vaclav Havel
There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight. Vaclav Havel
Vaclav Havel quote: "There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be..."
There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause. Vaclav Havel
Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility. Vaclav Havel
The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it. Vaclav Havel
The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both. Vaclav Havel
Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace. Vaclav Havel

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