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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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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
Judge
Defense
Judging
Organizes
Identity
Ruler
Becomes
Clich
Law
Rulers
Life
Organize
People
Lawyer

More quotes by Vaclav Havel

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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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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.
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Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.
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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.
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Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.
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Our country, if that is what we want, can now permanently radiate love, understanding, the power of the spirit and of ideas. It is precisely this glow that we can offer as our specific contribution to international politics.
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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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We live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.
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By perceiving ourselves as part of the river, we take responsibility for the river as a whole.
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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.
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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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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
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In my opinion, theater shouldn't give advice to citizens.
Vaclav Havel
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This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, and one thoughtless word can provoke an utterly nonsensical furor.
Vaclav Havel
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I have found that good taste, oddly enough, plays an important role in politics. Why is it like that? The most probable reason is that good taste is a visible manifestation of human sensibility toward the world, environment, people.
Vaclav Havel
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Evil must be confronted in its womb, and, if it can't be done otherwise, then it has to be dealt with by the use of force.
Vaclav Havel
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To serve grand ideas with a major work is not bad, nor is it all there's to art.
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I do think Russian foreign policy is very savvy. There's a need for great caution because the Russians are able to discreetly blackmail countries.
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The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning...
Vaclav Havel
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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