Vaclav Havel famous quotes

It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Steps #Action #Enough

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

#Hero #Succeed #Chance

Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Hope #Hero #Giving

Follow the man who seeks the truth; run from the man who has found it.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Running #Men #He Man

Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Peace #Responsibility #Names

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.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Lying #Hero #Responsibility

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Inspiring #Dream #Hope

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Leadership #Powerful #Hero

The question is...whether we shall, by whatever means, succeed in reconstituting the natural world as the true terrain of politics, rehabilitating the personal experience of human beings as the initial measure of things, placing morality above politics and responsibility above our desires, in making human community meaningful, in returning content to human speech, in reconstituting, as the focus of all social action, the autonomous, integral, and dignified human I,...
-- Vaclav Havel

#Meaningful #Responsibility #Community

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

#Giving Up #Struggle #Causes

Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Motivational #Connections #Ability

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Peace #Freedom #Hero

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

#Running #Truth #Found

Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Soul #Humans #Human Soul

The salvation of the world lies in the human heart.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Lying #Heart #World

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.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Chance #Criticize #Whole Life

I am in favor of [actions] that have authenticity, roots, originality, verve, balance, taste, communicativeness, challenge, relevance to their time-in short, things that make sense.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Inspirational #Roots #Challenges

Human rights are universal and indivisible. Human freedom is also indivisible: if it is denied to anyone in the world, it is therefore denied, indirectly, to all people. This is why we cannot remain silent in the face of evil or violence; silence merely encourages them.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Rights #Evil #People

A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerally of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Spring #Greatness #Important

We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Dream #Reality #Vision

You do not become a ''dissident'' just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Responsibility #Careers #Patriotism

Lying can never save us from another lie.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Trust #Betrayal #Lying

We must come to understand the deep mutual connection or kinship between the various forms of our spirituality. We must recollect our original spiritual and moral substance, which grew out of the same essential experience of humanity. I believe that this is the only way to achieve a genuine renewal of our sense of responsibility for ourselves and for the world. And at the same time, it is the only way to achieve a deeper understanding among cultures that will enable them to work together in a truly ecumenical way to create a new order for the world.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Spiritual #Believe #Responsibility

Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Love #Life #Family

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

#Inspirational #Funny #Running

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Success #Hope #Nature

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Humility #Men #World

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.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Hero #Men #Tragedy

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Stars #Hero #Political

I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Military #Hero #Creativity

Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Hope #Hero #Feelings

I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Thinking #Theatre #Should

There is only one Art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth.
-- Vaclav Havel

#Art #Authenticity #Sole

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

#Drama #Order #Theatre