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

Lying can never save us from another lie.

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.

But sometimes-especially in the hands of people with a tendency towards dogmatic, ideological thinking-this sentiment becomes a kind of hickory stick to crack across the knuckle of anyone who does not want, for whatever reason, to copy faithfully all the models presented-which today, of course, are western models. If that is what it means, then I can’t agree. Without being, as I have said, a seeker after some ‘third way’, I am opposed to blind imitation, especially if it becomes an ideology….We will never turn Czechoslovakia into a Federal Republic of Germany, or a France, or a Sweden, or a United States of America, and I don’t see the slightest reason why we should try.