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English is the 'language of liberty' for nations emerging from years of cultural oppression.

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
Cultural
English
Liberty
Nations
Language
Years
Emerging
Oppression

More quotes by Vaclav Havel

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The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.
Vaclav Havel
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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.
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.
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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The previous regime ... reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both their very essence and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine.
Vaclav Havel
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If by believing you mean praying to an anthropomorphic deity who created the world and half controls it and half observes it, then I am probably not a believer. But if you mean that it is not all accidental, that there is a mystery to existence, a deeper meaning, that I do believe in.
Vaclav Havel
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There is only one Art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth.
Vaclav Havel
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Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.
Vaclav Havel
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I am convinced that we will never build a democratic state based on rule of law if we do not at the same time build a state that is-regardless of how unscientific this may sound to the ears of a political scientist-humane, moral, intellectual and spiritual, and cultural.
Vaclav Havel
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Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.
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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The real test of a man is not when he plays the role that he wants for himself but when he plays the role destiny has for him.
Vaclav Havel
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Sober perseverance is more effective than enthusiastic emotions, which are all too capable of being transferred, with little difficulty, to something different each day.
Vaclav Havel
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People thought they could explain and conquer nature-yet the outcome is that they destroyed it and disinherited themselves from it.
Vaclav Havel
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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
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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.
Vaclav Havel
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I think its important for one to take a certain distance from oneself.
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.
Vaclav Havel
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The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.
Vaclav Havel
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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.
Vaclav Havel