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 t… - Václav Havel

Modern anthropocentrism inevitably meant that He who allegedly endowed man with his inalienable rights began to disappear from the world: He was so far beyond the grasp of modern science that he was gradually pushed into a sphere of privacy of sorts, if not directly into a sphere of private fancy — that is, to a place where public obligations no longer apply. The existence of a higher authority than man himself simply began to get in the way of human aspirations.

Excessive emphasis on political parties can have many unfortunate consequences….Power-hungry people, under certain circumstances, can use their party membership, their servility to party leaders, their clever concealment behind the party flag, to gain a position and influence that is out of all proportion to their qualities….Politicians seem to be devoting more time to party politics than to their jobs. Not a single law is passed without a debate about how a particular stand might serve a party’s popularity. Ideas, no matter how absurd, are touted purely to gain favour with the electorate.

The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and … often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.