Quote

The previous regime ... reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both their very essence and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine.

Vaclav Havel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Nature
Thus
Gifted
Autonomous
Mean
Tools
Nuts
Bolts
Men
Essence
Tool
Noisy
People
Cold
Mutual
Attacked
Relationship
Production
Regime
Huge
Productions
Reduced
War
Machine
Previous
Monstrously
Means
Machines
Regimes
Stinking

More quotes by Vaclav Havel

Image
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.
Vaclav Havel
Image
In my opinion, theater shouldn't give advice to citizens.
Vaclav Havel
Image
The world is not divided into two types of being, one superior and the other merely surrounding it. Being, nature, the universe - they are all one infinitely complex and mysterious metaorganism of which we are but a part, though a unique one.
Vaclav Havel
Image
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprising.
Vaclav Havel
Image
Sober perseverance is more effective than enthusiastic emotions, which are all too capable of being transferred, with little difficulty, to something different each day.
Vaclav Havel
Image
Ultimately, power only really listens to power, and if government is to be improved, we must be able to threaten its existence, not merely its reputation.
Vaclav Havel
Image
If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.
Vaclav Havel
Image
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.
Vaclav Havel
Image
Planetary democracy does not yet exist but our global civilization is already preparing a place for it. It is the very Earth we inhabit linked with Heaven above us. Only in this setting can the mutuality and the commonality of the human race be newly created with reverence and gratitude for that which transcends each of us and all of us together.
Vaclav Havel
Image
President Murabak has been a U.S. ally for decades. He was a guarantor of some degree of peace in the Middle East and has kept a good relationship with the Western world.
Vaclav Havel
Image
The salvation of the world lies in the human heart.
Vaclav Havel
Image
Man is in fact nailed down - like Christ on the Cross - to a grid of paradoxes. He balances between the torment of not knowing his mission and the joy of carrying it out, between nothingness and meaningfulness. And like Christ, he is in fact victorious by virtue of his defeats.
Vaclav Havel
Image
Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.
Vaclav Havel
Image
Nothing is more powerful than individuals acting out of their own conscience.
Vaclav Havel
Image
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
Image
To serve grand ideas with a major work is not bad, nor is it all there's to art.
Vaclav Havel
Image
I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me.
Vaclav Havel
Image
By perceiving ourselves as part of the river, we take responsibility for the river as a whole.
Vaclav Havel
Image
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
Image
All human suffering concerns each human being.
Vaclav Havel