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 plac… - Václav Havel

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.

It is largely up to the politicians which social forces they choose to liberate and which they choose to suppress, whether they rely on the good in each citizen or the bad. The former regime systematically mobilized the worst human qualities, like selfishness, envy, and hatred.

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.