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

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
Human
Humans
Darkest
Orientation
Held
Deep
Times
Hope
Soul

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If a single writer in a country is in chains, then there are some links of that chain that binds us all.
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Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
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President Murabak has been a U.S. ally for decades. He was a guarantor of some degree of peace in the Middle East and has kept a good relationship with the Western world.
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True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?
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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.
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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.
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I have read somewhere that in a totalitarian system martyrdom does better than thought.
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The real test of a man is not when he plays the role that he wants for himself but when he plays the role destiny has for him.
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Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.
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A genuinely fundamental and hopeful improvement in systems cannot happen without a significant shift in human consciousness.
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We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.
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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.
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The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle.
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Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them.
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Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.
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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.
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Modern science kills God and takes his place on the vacant throne. Science is the sole legitimate arbiter of all relavent truth.
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If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.
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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?
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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!
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