Famous quotes by »

Vaclav Havel

(1936-2011) Czech writer, philosopher, dissident, statesman, last President of Czechoslovakia

Update this biography »
Complete biography of Vaclav Havel »

0 fans

Sort by:PopularityA - Z

A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerality of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.

– Vaclav Havel

Rate it:

A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.

– Václav Havel

Rate it:

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for .success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.

– Vaclav Havel

Rate it:

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.

– Vaclav Havel

Rate it:

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

– Vaclav Havel

Rate it:

Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals.

– Václav Havel

Rate it:

Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals.

– Vaclav Havel

Rate it:

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.”

– Vaclav Havel

Rate it:

If a single writer in a country is in chains, then there are some links of that chain that binds us all.

– Vaclav Havel

Rate it:

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.”

– Václav Havel

Rate it:

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...

– Vaclav Havel

Rate it:

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.

– Vaclav Havel

Rate it:

None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events.

– Václav Havel

Rate it:

Society is a complex and mysterious creation and . it's extremely imprudent to believe in the fact it presents you with at a given moment, let alone to consider it the one and only true face.

– Vaclav Havel

Rate it:

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 further than the author himself can see or perceive.

– Václav Havel

Rate it:

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.

– Václav Havel

Rate it:

The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why and how it is said.

– Vaclav Havel

Rate it:

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. Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.

– Václav Havel

Rate it:

True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?

– Václav Havel

Rate it:

We are the first atheistic and global, all-embracing civilization. You cannot tell whether you are sitting at an airport in Hong Kong or in a hotel in Alaska. Everything is instrumentalized, subjected to a short-term purpose. It is quite possible that in such a situation any sense of a deeper meaning gets lost.”

– Vaclav Havel

Rate it:

We ask ourselves all kinds of questions, such as why does a peacock have such beautiful feathers, and we may answer that he needs the feathers to impress a female peacock, but then we ask ourselves, and why is there a peacock? And then we ask, why is there anything living? And then we ask, why is there anything at all? And if you tell some advocate of scientism that the answer is a secret, he will go white hot and write a book. But it is a secret. And the experience of living with the secret and thinking about it is in itself a kind of faith.”

– Václav Havel

Rate it:

You do not become a dissident just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.

– Václav Havel

Rate it:

Share your thoughts on Vaclav Havel's quotes with the community:

0 Comments

Notify me of new comments via email.

Quote of the Day Today's Quote | Archive

Would you like us to send you a FREE inspiring quote delivered to your inbox daily?

Citation

Use the citation below to add this author page to your bibliography:

Style:MLAChicagoAPA

"Vaclav Havel Quotes." Quotes.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 Nov. 2024. <https://www.quotes.net/authors/Vaclav+Havel+Quotes>.

Missing a quote of Vaclav Havel?

Know another good quote of Vaclav Havel? Don't keep it to yourself!

The Web's Largest Resource for

Famous Quotes & Sayings

A Member Of The STANDS4 Network

Books related to

Vaclav Havel

The Power of the Powerless
$18.52

from $12.36
Summer Meditations
from $2.93
The Power of the Powerless
$30.83

from $26.88
Open Letters
from $3.29
Disturbing the Peace
from $2.09

Our favorite collection of

Famous Authors

Edgar Allan Poe
1809 - 1849
Ernest Hemingway
1899 - 1961
Sigmund Freud
1856 - 1939
Albert Einstein
1879 - 1955
Martin Luther King, Jr.
1929 - 1968
Emily Dickinson
1830 - 1886
Mahatma Gandhi
1869 - 1948

Browse Quotes.net

#A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Random New Quotes

Quiz

Are you a quotes master?

Name the film "I've seen seambeams glittering in the darkness near Tannhauser Gate"

A Bladerunner

B All Quiet on the Western Front

C The Big Blue

D The Abyss