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Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.
Vaclav Havel
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Vaclav Havel
Age: 75 †
Born: 1936
Born: October 5
Died: 2011
Died: December 18
Director
Dissident
Essayist
Film Director
Human Rights Activist
Leader
Playwright
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Praha
Vaclav Havel
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More quotes by Vaclav Havel
The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle.
Vaclav Havel
Those who rebelled against totalitarian rule and those who simply managed to remain themselves and think freely, were all persecuted. We should not forget any of those who paid for our present freedom in one way or another.
Vaclav Havel
The previous regime ... reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both their very essence and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine.
Vaclav Havel
I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than 10 military divisions.
Vaclav Havel
A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clearsighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerality of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.
Vaclav Havel
Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.
Vaclav Havel
The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
Vaclav Havel
Without the constantly living and articulated eperience of absurdity, there would be no reason to attempt to do something meaningful. And on the contrary, how can one experience one's own absurdity if one is not constantly seeking meaning?
Vaclav Havel
Those that say that individuals are not capable of changing anything are only looking for excuses.
Vaclav Havel
If the world is to change for the better it must start with a change in human consciousness, in the very humanness of modern man.
Vaclav Havel
We live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.
Vaclav Havel
We are the first atheistic and global, all-embracing civilization. You cannot tell whether you are sitting at an airport in Hong Kong or in a hotel in Alaska. Everything is instrumentalized, subjected to a short-term purpose. It is quite possible that in such a situation any sense of a deeper meaning gets lost.
Vaclav Havel
In my opinion, theater shouldn't give advice to citizens.
Vaclav Havel
The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it.
Vaclav Havel
I have read somewhere that in a totalitarian system martyrdom does better than thought.
Vaclav Havel
This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, and one thoughtless word can provoke an utterly nonsensical furor.
Vaclav Havel
There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
Vaclav Havel
I have preserved my identity, put its credibility to the test and defended my dignity. What good this will bring the world I don't know. But for me it is good.
Vaclav Havel
Time and time again I have been persuaded that a huge potential of goodwill is slumbering within our society. It's just that it's incoherent, suppressed, confused, crippled and perplexed.
Vaclav Havel
The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance.
Vaclav Havel