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Without commonly shared and widely entrenched moral values and obligations, neither the law, nor democratic government, nor even the market economy will function properly.

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
Government
Market
Without
Democratic
Entrenched
Even
Neither
Obligations
Function
Widely
Economy
Commonly
Law
Shared
Moral
Properly
Values
Obligation

More quotes by 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.
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I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than 10 military divisions.
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There's a dilemma over how to balance concrete economic interests with critical opinions on the state of human rights. It's the human rights that suffer, and that's a great price to pay.
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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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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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Lying can never save us from another lie.
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Hope is not a feeling. It is not the belief that things will turn out well, but the conviction that what you are doing makes sense, no matter how things turn out.
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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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It's not hard to stand behind one's successes. But to accept responsibility for one's failures... that is devishly hard!
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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.
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Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.
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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.
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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.
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We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.
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.
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All human suffering concerns each human being.
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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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As in everything else, I must start with myself. That is: in all circumstances try to be decent, just, tolerant, and understanding, and at the same time try to resist corruption and deception. In other words, I must do my utmost to act in harmony with my conscience and my better self.
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There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides, to distrust words, and indict them for the horrors that might slumber unobtrusively within them - isn’t this, after all, the true vocation of the intellectual?
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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