Quote

Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.

Vaclav Havel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Wells
Everything
Well
Certainty
Work
Meaning
Life
Feeling
Hope
Feelings
Ends

More quotes by Vaclav Havel

Image
Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you.
Vaclav Havel
Image
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
Image
Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.
Vaclav Havel
Image
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
Image
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
Image
None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events.
Vaclav Havel
Image
Truth is not merely what we are thinking, but also why, to whom and under what circumstances we say it.
Vaclav Havel
Image
By perceiving ourselves as part of the river, we take responsibility for the river as a whole.
Vaclav Havel
Image
In any case, ideals are something we strive for they are somewhere on the horizon of our efforts they provide meaning and direction they are not, however, static quotas that we either fulfill or do not.
Vaclav Havel
Image
Frank Zappa was one of the gods of the Czech underground, I thought of him as a friend. Whenever I feel like escaping from the world of the Presidency, I think of him.
Vaclav Havel
Image
People, your Government has returned to you!
Vaclav Havel
Image
There's a dilemma over how to balance concrete economic interests with critical opinions on the state of human rights. It's the human rights that suffer, and that's a great price to pay.
Vaclav Havel
Image
I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart.
Vaclav Havel
Image
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
Image
Responsibility is something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success. Responsibility to the order of Being, where, and only where, they will be properly judged.
Vaclav Havel
Image
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
Image
There is only one Art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth.
Vaclav Havel
Image
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
Image
We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality.
Vaclav Havel
Image
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