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Ultimately, power only really listens to power, and if government is to be improved, we must be able to threaten its existence, not merely its reputation.

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
Really
Reputation
Ultimately
Merely
Existence
Power
Government
Listens
Able
Threaten
Must
Improved

More quotes by Vaclav Havel

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People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don't know where to go.
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The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.
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It was never the people who complained of the universality of human rights, nor did the people consider human rights as a Western or Northern imposition. It was often their leaders who did so.
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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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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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Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
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We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality.
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Self-confidence is not pride. Just the contrary: only a person or a nation that is self-confident, in the best sense of the word, is capable of listening to others, accepting them as equals, forgiving its enemies and regretting its own guilt.
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Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them.
Vaclav Havel
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Modern science kills God and takes his place on the vacant throne. Science is the sole legitimate arbiter of all relavent truth.
Vaclav Havel
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Truth is not merely what we are thinking, but also why, to whom and under what circumstances we say it.
Vaclav Havel
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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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I think its important for one to take a certain distance from oneself.
Vaclav Havel
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You can't spend your whole life criticizing something and then, when you have the chance to do it better, refuse to go near it.
Vaclav Havel
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I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me.
Vaclav Havel
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There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
Vaclav Havel
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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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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
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I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart.
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