Vaclav Havel

People, your Government has returned to you!

— Vaclav Havel

Nothing is more powerful than individuals acting out of their own conscience.

— Vaclav Havel

To serve grand ideas with a major work is not bad, nor is it all there's to art.

— Vaclav Havel

Keep the company of those who seek the truth- run from those who have found it

— Vaclav Havel

Communism was overthrown by life, by thought, by dignity.

— Vaclav Havel

I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.

— Vaclav Havel

I think it's important for one to take a certain distance from oneself.

— Vaclav Havel

When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.

— Vaclav Havel

I do think Russian foreign policy is very savvy. There's a need for great caution because the Russians are able to discreetly…

— Vaclav Havel

If the world is to change for the better it must start with a change in human consciousness, in the very humanness…

— Vaclav Havel

You can't spend your whole life criticizing something and then, when you have the chance to do it better, refuse to go…

— Vaclav Havel

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

— Vaclav Havel

We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.

— Vaclav Havel

But if I were to say who influenced me most, then I'd say Franz Kafka. And his works were always anchored in…

— Vaclav Havel

Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

— Vaclav Havel

I personally think President [Hosni] Mubarak, who's done a lot for Egypt, should acknowledge that his time has come and step down…

— Vaclav Havel

There's a dilemma over how to balance concrete economic interests with critical opinions on the state of human rights. It's the human…

— Vaclav Havel

“The point I am trying to make is that words are a mysterious, ambiguous, ambivalent, and perfidious phenomenon. They can be rays…

— Václav Havel

Frank Zappa was one of the gods of the Czech underground, I thought of him as a friend. Whenever I feel like…

— Vaclav Havel

Sober perseverance is more effective than enthusiastic emotions, which are all too capable of being transferred, with little difficulty, to something different…

— Vaclav Havel

Our social and economic statistics are telling us what we already know in our hearts: we have created a world that works…

— Vaclav Havel

This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and unique...something truly historical, in the sense…

— Vaclav Havel

There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides, to distrust words, and…

— Vaclav Havel

“... no one ever develops and achieves self-awareness in a vacuum, beyond all ears and systems. The period you grow up in…

— Václav Havel

Someone who does not draw strength from himself and who is incapable of finding the meaning of his life within himself will...seek…

— Vaclav Havel

“Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being…

— Václav Havel

The most important thing is that man should be the measure of all structures, including economic structures, and not that man be…

— Vaclav Havel

Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at…

— Vaclav Havel

The experience I'm talking about has given me one certainty: the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the…

— Vaclav Havel

The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order. Yet, I think it must…

— Vaclav Havel

We must come to understand the deep mutual connection or kinship between the various forms of our spirituality. We must recollect our…

— Vaclav Havel

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

— Vaclav Havel

“Again, I call to mind that distant moment in [the prison at] Hermanice when on a hot, cloudless summer day, I sat…

— Václav Havel

Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred.

— Vaclav Havel

There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.

— Vaclav Havel

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

— Vaclav Havel

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

— Vaclav Havel

I think its important for one to take a certain distance from oneself.

— Vaclav Havel

Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena.

— Vaclav Havel

The salvation of the world lies in the human heart.

— Vaclav Havel