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But if I were to say who influenced me most, then I'd say Franz Kafka. And his works were always anchored in the Central European region.
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
Poet
Politician
Writer
Praha
Vaclav Havel
European
Central
Works
Franz
Always
Kafka
Anchored
Region
Influenced
Regions
More quotes by Vaclav Havel
Man is in fact nailed down - like Christ on the Cross - to a grid of paradoxes. He balances between the torment of not knowing his mission and the joy of carrying it out, between nothingness and meaningfulness. And like Christ, he is in fact victorious by virtue of his defeats.
Vaclav Havel
What's certain is that a totalitarian enclave like Cuba's can't continue to exist, so change will definitely come there, eventually.
Vaclav Havel
The world is not divided into two types of being, one superior and the other merely surrounding it. Being, nature, the universe - they are all one infinitely complex and mysterious metaorganism of which we are but a part, though a unique one.
Vaclav Havel
Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.
Vaclav Havel
The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle.
Vaclav Havel
Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility.
Vaclav Havel
The award is destined for scientists who do not fear to touch on some of the darkest aspects of being without betraying what they have achieved. On the contrary, they head in this direction.
Vaclav Havel
Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations.
Vaclav Havel
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Vaclav Havel
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.
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
The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and ... often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.
Vaclav Havel
Courage means going against majority opinion in the name of the truth.
Vaclav Havel
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge.
Vaclav Havel
Those that say that individuals are not capable of changing anything are only looking for excuses.
Vaclav Havel
Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.
Vaclav Havel
Without commonly shared and widely entrenched moral values and obligations, neither the law, nor democratic government, nor even the market economy will function properly.
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
When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.
Vaclav Havel
The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.
Vaclav Havel
