Václav Havel Quotes

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

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.

I think that it is my duty today to remind you as well of the good things that have happened, accomplishments that a year ago we could scarcely have imagined.

It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must step up the stairs.

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.

In other words, if there is to be any chance at all of success, there is only one way to strive for decency, reason, responsibility, sincerity, civility, and tolerance, and that is decently, reasonably, responsibly, sincerely, civilly, and tolerantly.

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

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.

ricostruire il mondo naturale come vero terreno della politica, a riabilitare l’esperienza personale degli uomini come misura prima delle cose, ponendo la moralità sopra la politica e la responsabilità al di sopra dei nostri desideri, a dare significato alla comunità degli uomini, a restituire il contenuto al linguaggio umano, a ricostituire l’«Io»-uomo, autonomo, integrale, dignitoso come fulcro di tutta l’azione sociale, responsabile per noi stessi, perché siamo legati a qualcosa di più grande e capace di sacrificare qualcosa, in casi estremi anche tutto, della sua prosperosa e banale vita privata– quella «legge della quotidianità», come Jan Patocˇka era solita definirla– per il bene di ciò che dà significato alla vita.

Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.

If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.

A genuinely fundamental and hopeful improvement in "systems" cannot happen without a significant shift in human consciousness.

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.

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.

Sono convinto che il modo migliore di affrontarli sia quello di studiarli senza pregiudizio, imparare da essi e resistergli, comportandosi in modo radicalmente differente; laddove tale differenza nasce da una continua lotta contro il male che essi incarnano con tanta chiarezza, e che, tuttavia, dimora ovunque e quindi anche in ognuno di noi.