The cliché organizes life; it expropriates people's identity; it becomes ruler, defense lawyer, judge, and the law. — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
People thought they could explain and conquer nature-yet the outcome is that they destroyed it and disinherited themselves from it. — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
Speaking about myself, I've been pleasantly surprised that my older plays are still being performed. Most important is that they still have… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do.… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
Human rights are universal and indivisible. Human freedom is also indivisible: if it is denied to anyone in the world, it is… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
Human rights, human freedoms... and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world... while the state is a human… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
I have found that good taste, oddly enough, plays an important role in politics. Why is it like that? The most probable… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to that automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-consumer… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
You may ask what kind of a republic I dream of. Let me reply: I dream of a republic independent, free, and… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
Human rights, human freedoms, and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world. These values are as powerful as… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
The previous regime ... reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
It was never the people who complained of the universality of human rights, nor did the people consider human rights as a… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.” — Václav Havel Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me. — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost. — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
