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
Those who rebelled against totalitarian rule and those who simply managed to remain themselves and think freely, were all persecuted. We should… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
Our social and economic statistics are telling us what we already know in our hearts: we have created a world that works… — 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
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprising. — 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
Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, 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
The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
We must come to understand the deep mutual connection or kinship between the various forms of our spirituality. We must recollect our… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order. Yet, I think it must… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a… — Vaclav Havel Copy Share Image
If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President. — 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
