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A genuinely fundamental and hopeful improvement in systems cannot happen without a significant shift in human consciousness.

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
Fundamentals
Without
Significant
Consciousness
Genuinely
Happen
Shift
Happens
Hopeful
Cannot
Systems
Improvement
Human
Fundamental
Humans

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Those that say that individuals are not capable of changing anything are only looking for excuses.
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Our social and economic statistics are telling us what we already know in our hearts: we have created a world that works for only a few. To change this, we must learn to act toward each other and our environment in profoundly different ways.
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Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.
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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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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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If the world is to change for the better it must start with a change in human consciousness, in the very humanness of modern man.
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If a single writer in a country is in chains, then there are some links of that chain that binds us all.
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Courage means going against majority opinion in the name of the truth.
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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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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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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.
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Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.
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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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I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me.
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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 read somewhere that in a totalitarian system martyrdom does better than thought.
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Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.
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There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
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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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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.
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