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I am in favor of [actions] that have authenticity, roots, originality, verve, balance, taste, communicativeness, challenge, relevance to their time-in short, things that make sense.

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
Challenges
Favor
Inspirational
Favors
Sense
Actions
Action
Challenge
Make
Roots
Verve
Things
Short
Relevance
Time
Balance
Authenticity
Taste
Originality

More quotes by Vaclav Havel

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Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.
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The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.
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Communism was overthrown by life, by thought, by dignity.
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A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clearsighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerality of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.
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It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.
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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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Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena.
Vaclav Havel
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Truth is not merely what we are thinking, but also why, to whom and under what circumstances we say it.
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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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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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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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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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Ownership is not a vice, not something to be ashamed of, but rather a commitment, and an instrument by which the general good can be served.
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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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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If by believing you mean praying to an anthropomorphic deity who created the world and half controls it and half observes it, then I am probably not a believer. But if you mean that it is not all accidental, that there is a mystery to existence, a deeper meaning, that I do believe in.
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.
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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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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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The salvation of the world lies in the human heart.
Vaclav Havel