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Human rights, human freedoms... and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world... while the state is a human creation, human beings are the creation of God.

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
Values
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Compulsion
Certain
Creation
Patriotic
Human
Accepting
Deepest
Humans
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Somewhere
World
Rights
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People
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Dignity
Dies
Beings
Perceptible
State
Outside
Freedoms

More quotes by Vaclav Havel

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People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.
Vaclav Havel
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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.
Vaclav Havel
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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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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
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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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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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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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I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me.
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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If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for.
Vaclav Havel
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People thought they could explain and conquer nature-yet the outcome is that they destroyed it and disinherited themselves from it.
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.
Vaclav Havel
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There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, we live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.
Vaclav Havel
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I think its important for one to take a certain distance from oneself.
Vaclav Havel
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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
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I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
Vaclav Havel
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English is the 'language of liberty' for nations emerging from years of cultural oppression.
Vaclav Havel
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Barack Obama is president of a superpower and I'm a citizen of a small state.
Vaclav Havel
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Though my heart may be left of centre, I have always known that the only economic system that works is a market economy... This is the only natural economy, the only kind that makes sense, the only one that can lead to prosperity, because it is the only one that reflects the nature of life itself.
Vaclav Havel
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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.
Vaclav Havel