Václav Havel Quotes

I appeal to all pupils, students and young people, asking you to focus on the horizons that are opening up for you, and which you could only dream of a year ago. Our future will depend on your desire for education and moral values as well as on your entrepreneurial spirit.

In quanto tale, quel «dissidente» ha l’opportunità e anche il dovere di riflettere su questa esperienza, di testimoniarla, di lasciarla in eredità a coloro che sono abbastanza fortunati da non doverla subire. Così anche noi possiamo ricambiare, in qualche modo, l’aiuto che ci viene offerto, possiamo aiutare in nome del nostro profondo e condiviso interesse, nell’interesse dell’umanità.

The recent period — and in particular the last six weeks of our peaceful revolution — has shown the enormous human, moral and spiritual potential, and the civic culture that slumbered in our society under the enforced mask of apathy. Whenever someone categorically claimed that we were this or that, I always objected that society is a very mysterious creature and that it is unwise to trust only the face it presents to you. I am happy that I was not mistaken. Everywhere in the world people wonder where those meek, humiliated, skeptical and seemingly cynical citizens of Czechoslovakia found the marvelous strength to shake the totalitarian yoke from their shoulders in several weeks, and in a decent and peaceful way.

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.

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.

گاهی اوقات برای درک حقیقت باید به قعر تیره‌بختی ها برویم؛

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.

Cultural conflicts are increasing and are understandably more dangerous today than at any other time in history. The end of the era of rationalism has been catastrophic. Armed with the same supermodern weapons, often from the same suppliers, and followed by television cameras, the members of various tribal cults are at war with one another.

A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clearsighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerality of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.

The tragic element in modern man, not ignore the meaning of his life, but it bothers him less and less.

The cliché organizes life; it expropriates people's identity; it becomes ruler, defense lawyer, judge, and the law.

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. They want to be told this publicly. They want to know that those ‘at the top’ are on their side. They feel recognized and cultivated. For it to develop and have an impact it must hear that the world does not ridicule it.

Člověk by se měl chovat tak, jak si myslí, že by se měli chovat všichni.

There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.

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.