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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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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
Purpose
Regulations
Understand
Invent
True
Regulation
Earth
Differently
Enough
Perfectly
Must
Machines
Institutions
Existence

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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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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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The cliché organizes life it expropriates people's identity it becomes ruler, defense lawyer, judge, and the law.
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There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.
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We live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.
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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.
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There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
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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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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.
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It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.
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Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations.
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If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.
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Every consession gives rise to further concessions, we cannot back down, because behind us there is only an abyss, we must keep our promises and demand that they be kept.
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Those who rebelled against totalitarian rule and those who simply managed to remain themselves and think freely, were all persecuted. We should not forget any of those who paid for our present freedom in one way or another.
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The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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