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The truth is not simply what you think it is it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.

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
Truth
Also
Think
Thinking
Circumstances
Simply

More quotes by Vaclav Havel

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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
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Ownership is not a vice, not something to be ashamed of, but rather a commitment, and an instrument by which the general good can be served.
Vaclav Havel
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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
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Man is a part of the world, and his spirit is part of the spirit of the world. We are merely a peculiar mode of Being, a living atom within it, or, rather, a cell that, if sufficiently open to itself and its own mystery, can also experience the mystery, the will, the pain, and the hope of the world.
Vaclav Havel
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Ultimately, power only really listens to power, and if government is to be improved, we must be able to threaten its existence, not merely its reputation.
Vaclav Havel
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I am convinced that we will never build a democratic state based on rule of law if we do not at the same time build a state that is-regardless of how unscientific this may sound to the ears of a political scientist-humane, moral, intellectual and spiritual, and cultural.
Vaclav Havel
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Sober perseverance is more effective than enthusiastic emotions, which are all too capable of being transferred, with little difficulty, to something different each day.
Vaclav Havel
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Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.
Vaclav Havel
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The cliché organizes life it expropriates people's identity it becomes ruler, defense lawyer, judge, and the law.
Vaclav Havel
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Hope is not a feeling. It is not the belief that things will turn out well, but the conviction that what you are doing makes sense, no matter how things turn out.
Vaclav Havel
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This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and unique... something truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard.
Vaclav Havel
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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.
Vaclav Havel
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Self-confidence is not pride. Just the contrary: only a person or a nation that is self-confident, in the best sense of the word, is capable of listening to others, accepting them as equals, forgiving its enemies and regretting its own guilt.
Vaclav Havel
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It's not hard to stand behind one's successes. But to accept responsibility for one's failures... that is devishly hard!
Vaclav Havel
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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
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If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.
Vaclav Havel
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I am not sure one is capable of reflecting absurdity without having a strong sense of meaning. Absurdity makes sense only against a meaningful background. It is the deeper meaning that is shedding light on the absurdity. There must be a vanish point, a metaphysical horizon if you will where absurdity and meaning merge.
Vaclav Havel
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If one were required to increase the dramatic seriousness of his face in relation to the seriousness of the problems he had to confront, he would quickly petrify and become his own statue.
Vaclav Havel
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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
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I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
Vaclav Havel