Citizens Quotes by Vaclav Havel

9 Citizens quotes by Vaclav Havel

Vaclav Havel’s thoughts on citizens surface in nine short excerpts. The collection shows his poetic, human‑rights‑focused voice, giving a swift sense of his ideals.

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Barack Obama is president of a superpower and I'm a citizen of a small state.

Vaclav Havel

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In my opinion, theater shouldn't give advice to citizens.

Vaclav Havel

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Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations.

Vaclav Havel

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A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be…

Vaclav Havel

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The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire…

Vaclav Havel

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When a person tries to act in accordance with his conscience, when he tries to speak the truth, when he tries to…

Vaclav Havel

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My dear fellow citizens: For forty years you have heard from my predecessors on this day different variations of the same theme:…

Vaclav Havel

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Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens…

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…

Vaclav Havel

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More by Vaclav Havel

I am convinced that we will never build a democratic state based on rule of law if we do not at the same time…

Vaclav Havel

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People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power,…

Vaclav Havel

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“For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”

Václav 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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This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, and one thoughtless word can provoke an utterly…

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…

Vaclav Havel

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Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable…

Vaclav Havel

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Our country, if that is what we want, can now permanently radiate love, understanding, the power of the spirit and of ideas. It is…

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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People, your Government has returned to you!

Vaclav Havel

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A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accouterments trappings of mass…

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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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