Václav Havel Quotes

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.

It is not true that people of high principles are ill-suited for politics. High principles have only to be accompanied by patience, consideration, a sense of measure and understanding for others. It is not true that only coldhearted, cynical, arrogant, haughty or brawling persons succeed in politics. Such people are naturally attracted by politics. In the end, however, politeness and good manners weigh more.

You can't spend your whole life criticizing something and then, when you have the chance to do it better, refuse to go near it.

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 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.

The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore one another, to care only about ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension, and for many of us they represented only psychological peculiarities, or they resembled gone-astray greetings from ancient times, a little ridiculous in the era of computers and spaceships.

siamo di fronte a un compito fondamentale da cui tutto il resto dovrebbe discendere. Tale compito è quello di resistere in modo vigile e attento, ma allo stesso tempo con totale dedizione, sempre e ovunque, all’impeto irrazionale del potere anonimo, impersonale e inumano, il potere delle ideologie, dei sistemi, degli apparati, della burocrazia, dei linguaggi artificiali e degli slogan politici. Dobbiamo resistere alla sua complessa e totalmente alienante pressione, sia che assuma la forma di consumo, pubblicità, repressione, tecnologia o cliché, che sono tutti consanguinei del fanatismo e fonte del pensiero totalitario.

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.

The particular importance of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution is not, however, that it took place in such a large and important country in the former Soviet empire or that it inspired many countries still burdened with postcommunism, but in something perhaps even more significant: that revolution gave a clear answer to a still open question: where does one of the major spheres of civilization in the world today (the so-called West) end, and where does the other sphere (the so-called East, or rather Euro-Asia) begin? I recall — and I mentioned this during my meeting with Yuschenko — that an important American politician once asked me where Ukraine belongs. My impression is that it belongs to what we call the West. But that’s not what I said; I said that this was a matter for Ukraine to decide for itself.

None of us knows 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.

Classical modern science described only the surface of things, a single dimension of reality. And the more dogmatically science treated it as the only dimension, as the very essence of reality, the more misleading it became. Today, for instance, we may know immeasurably more about the universe than our ancestors did, and yet, it increasingly seems they knew something more essential about it than we do, something that escapes us.

There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides, to distrust words, and indict them for the horrors that might slumber unobtrusively within them — isn't this, after all, the true vocation of the intellectual?

I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient.

Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

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.