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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.

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
Test
Tests
Dignity
Identity
Bring
Good
Defended
World
Preserved
Credibility

More quotes by 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.
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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 do think Russian foreign policy is very savvy. There's a need for great caution because the Russians are able to discreetly blackmail countries.
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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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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
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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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Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.
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It seems to me that one of the most basic human experiences, one that is genuinely universal and unites-or, more precisely, could unite-all of humanity, is the experience of transcendence in the broadest sense of the word.
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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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Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations.
Vaclav Havel
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It's not true that you should first think up an idea for a better world and only then put it into practice, but, rather, through the fact of your existence in the world, you create the idea or manifest it - create it, as it were, from the material of the world, articulate it in the language of the world.
Vaclav Havel
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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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In my opinion, theater shouldn't give advice to citizens.
Vaclav Havel
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To serve grand ideas with a major work is not bad, nor is it all there's to art.
Vaclav Havel
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Speaking about myself, I've been pleasantly surprised that my older plays are still being performed. Most important is that they still have something to say to today's audience, in particular the young people who enjoy my plays. That's the best I could hope for, that the plays aren't single-use products of one era.
Vaclav Havel
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It is not enough to invent new machines, new regulations, or new institutions. We must understand differently and more perfectly the true purpose of our existence on this earth.
Vaclav Havel
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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.
Vaclav Havel
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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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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
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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