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Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations.

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
Respect
Nations
Free
Autonomous
Without
Respecting
Self
Citizenship
Independence
Independent
Citizens

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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Nothing is more powerful than individuals acting out of their own conscience.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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 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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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.
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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.
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Follow the man who seeks the truth run from the man who has found it.
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The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension.
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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.
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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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Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.
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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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As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.
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The cliché organizes life it expropriates people's identity it becomes ruler, defense lawyer, judge, and the law.
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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.
Vaclav Havel