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, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Tyranny
A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.
—Vaclav Havel
This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, and one thoughtless word can provoke an utterly nonsensical furor.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Language
None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events.
—Vaclav Havel
Hope… is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Work, Hope
If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Presidency
Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Storytelling
Without commonly shared and widely entrenched moral values and obligations, neither the law, nor democratic government, nor even the market economy will function properly.
—Vaclav Havel
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
Topics: Books, Literature
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
The only salvation of the world today… is the rapid dissemination of the basic values of the West, that is, the ideas of democracy, human rights, the civil society, and the free market.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Value
There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides, to distrust words, and indict them for the horrors that might slumber unobtrusively within them—isn’t this, after all, the true vocation of the intellectual?
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Words
The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Authors & Writing
Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Age
Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Laughter, Humor
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
Topics: Awareness, Action
The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin—and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Truth
The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning—in other words, of absurdity—the more energetically meaning is sought.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Absence, Discovery
I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Theater
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
Topics: Power
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
Topics: Dissent
Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.
—Vaclav Havel
Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own failure as individuals.
—Vaclav Havel
Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to prosecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Tyranny
There’s always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Intellectuals, Intelligence
The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better. Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Law, Lawyers
I have preserved my identity, put its credibility to the test and defended my dignity. What good this will bring the world I don’t know. But for me it is good.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Identity
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have—by disrupting that order—a way of surprising.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Theater
The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.
—Vaclav Havel
Topics: Literature, Books
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
Topics: Hope
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Robertson Davies Canadian Novelist, Playwright
- Nelson Mandela South African Political leader
- David Suzuki Canadian Scientist, Environmental Activist
- Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
- A. S. Byatt English Novelist, Poet
- Seamus Heaney Irish Poet, Playwright
- Muriel Spark Scottish Novelist, Poet
- Margaret Atwood Canadian Author
- Desmond Tutu South African Clergyman
- Barbara Jordan American Educator, Politician
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