Václav Havel Short Quotes

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I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.

Václav Havel
The Gypsies are a litmus test not of democracy but of civil society.

Václav Havel
The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle.

Václav Havel
There's always something suspicious about an intellectual on the winning side.

Václav Havel
If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.

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

Václav Havel
Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.

Václav Havel
We are finding out that what looked like a neglected house a year ago is in fact a ruin.

Václav Havel
A specter is haunting eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called "dissent."

Václav Havel
My dear friends, I bid you farewell as your President. I remain with you as your fellow citizen!

Václav Havel
Those that say that individuals are not capable of changing anything are only looking for excuses.

Václav Havel
There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.

Václav Havel
To respond to evil by committing another evil does not eliminate evil but allows it to go on forever.

Václav Havel
Truth is not merely what we are thinking, but also why, to whom and under what circumstances we say it.

Václav Havel
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have — by disrupting that order — a way of surprising.

Václav Havel
The cliché organizes life; it expropriates people's identity; it becomes ruler, defense lawyer, judge, and the law.

Václav Havel
Full freedom of speech and expression prevails in our country, and freedom of assembly and association is guaranteed.

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

Václav Havel
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.

Václav Havel
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.

Václav Havel
The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning — in other words, of absurdity — the more energetically meaning is sought.

Václav Havel
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.

Václav Havel
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.

Václav Havel
Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.

Václav Havel
The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and … often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.

Václav Havel
It also happens, rather often, that politicians do not actually talk to each other but only to one another's shadows as they appear in the media.

Václav Havel
The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.

Václav Havel
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
God — I don't know why—wanted me to be a Czech. It was not my choice. But I accept it, and I try to do something for my country because I live here.

Václav Havel
I think that it is my duty today to remind you as well of the good things that have happened, accomplishments that a year ago we could scarcely have imagined.

Václav Havel