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Human rights are universal and indivisible. Human freedom is also indivisible: if it is denied to anyone in the world, it is therefore denied, indirectly, to all people. This is why we cannot remain silent in the face of evil or violence silence merely encourages them.

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
Human
Rights
Denied
Humans
Anyone
Remain
World
Face
Merely
People
Faces
Silent
Freedom
Universal
Humanitarianism
Evil
Therefore
Indirectly
Cannot
Silence
Indivisible
Also
Violence
Encourages

More quotes by Vaclav Havel

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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.
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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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Technological measures are important, but equally important is... a consciousness of the commonality of all living beings and an emphasis on shared responsibility.
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But if I were to say who influenced me most, then I'd say Franz Kafka. And his works were always anchored in the Central European region.
Vaclav Havel
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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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Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.
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The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it.
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Follow the man who seeks the truth run from the man who has found it.
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Lying can never save us from another lie.
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Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.
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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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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
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Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.
Vaclav Havel
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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.
Vaclav Havel
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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
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The hope of the world lies in the rehabilitation of the living human being, not just the body but also the soul.
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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.
Vaclav Havel
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The only salvation of the world today... is the rapid dissemination of the basic values of the West, that is, the ideas of democracy, human rights, the civil society, and the free market.
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I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
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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