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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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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
Good
Instrument
Ashamed
Vices
Instruments
Commitment
General
Served
Rather
Ownership
Something
Vice

More quotes by Vaclav Havel

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I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me.
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I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
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I have preserved my identity, put its credibility to the test and defended my dignity. What good this will bring the world I don't know. But for me it is good.
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The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and ... often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.
Vaclav Havel
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Barack Obama is president of a superpower and I'm a citizen of a small state.
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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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Keep the company of those who seek the truth- run from those who have found it
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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.
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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I think its important for one to take a certain distance from oneself.
Vaclav Havel
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Time and time again I have been persuaded that a huge potential of goodwill is slumbering within our society. It's just that it's incoherent, suppressed, confused, crippled and perplexed.
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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Lying can never save us from another lie.
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.
Vaclav Havel
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People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don't know where to go.
Vaclav Havel
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The award is destined for scientists who do not fear to touch on some of the darkest aspects of being without betraying what they have achieved. On the contrary, they head in this direction.
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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Modern science kills God and takes his place on the vacant throne. Science is the sole legitimate arbiter of all relavent truth.
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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Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge.
Vaclav Havel