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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.

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
Humans
Morality
Way
Identity
World
Offers
Beings
Specious
Easier
Relating
Making
Ideology
Part
Dignity
Human
Illusion

More quotes by Vaclav Havel

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Let us admit that most of us writers feel an essential aversion to politics. By taking such a position, however, we accept the perverted principle of specialization, according to which some are paid to write about the horrors of the world and human responsibility and others to deal with those horrors and bear the human responsibility for them.
Vaclav Havel
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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
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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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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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I personally think President [Hosni] Mubarak, who's done a lot for Egypt, should acknowledge that his time has come and step down right away.
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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I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence.
Vaclav Havel
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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
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There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.
Vaclav Havel
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Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.
Vaclav Havel
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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.
Vaclav Havel
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Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprising.
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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Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.
Vaclav Havel
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Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred.
Vaclav Havel
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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
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There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
Vaclav Havel
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When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.
Vaclav Havel
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In my opinion, theater shouldn't give advice to citizens.
Vaclav Havel
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We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.
Vaclav Havel