49 Vaclav Havel Quotes
Lying can never save us from another lie
I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect
Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart
When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete
Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life
There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side
True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?
Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have, by disrupting that order, a way of surprising
If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President

Vaclav Havel quotes with pictures

It is as if many have again ignored the fact that an attack on the freedom of individuals threatens the freedom of all
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge
Vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs
The truth is not simply what you think it is, it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why and how it is said
The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less
I felt the need to stir things up, To confront others for a change and force them to deal with a situation that I myself had created
The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning, in other words, of absurdity, the more energetically meaning is sought
The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it
Poles are able to reflect their history, they respect it. Who knows if anybody will remember when we commemorate our 25 years
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out
Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous, anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not
Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you
For 15 years the Government of Burma has refused to implement recommendations made by the UN and the situation is getting worse
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
Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy
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
I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions
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
Just as many showed their solidarity with us when we were striving for freedom, so now we must show solidarity to those who are only striving for it in uneasy conditions
Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point, only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it
None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events
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
Genuine politics, even politics worthy of the name, the only politics I am willing to devote myself to, is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole
Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope, perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good
People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being
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
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
A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerally of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action
He tries to explain why man behaves most improbably, strangely, at variance with his nature, how it is possible for instance that a calm, rather neutral petty bourgeois is all of a sudden capable of commanding a concentration camp, burning to death or gassing thousands of people, and afterwards returning to his clerk's life as if nothing happened
When the internal crisis of the totalitarian system grows so deep that it becomes clear to everyone, and when more and more people learn to speak their own language and reject the hollow, mendacious language of the powers that be, it means that freedom is remarkably close, if not directly within reach
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
The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights, he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive
You do not become a "dissident" just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society
If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny his own self in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses, namely, the sense of humiliation
Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us

Vaclav Havel sayings and pictures

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
As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it
The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin, and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost