Vaclav Havel Quotes & Sayings

As in everything else, I must start with myself. That is: in all circumstances try to be decent, just, tolerant, and understanding, and at the same time try to resist corruption and deception. In other words, I must do my utmost to act in harmony with my conscience and my better self. — Vaclav Havel

In everyone there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudo-life. This is much more than a simple conflict between two identities. It is something far worse: it is a challenge to the very notion of identity itself. — Vaclav Havel

Sober perseverance is more effective than enthusiastic emotions, which are all too capable of being transferred, with little difficulty, to something different each day. — Vaclav Havel

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

You may ask what kind of a republic I dream of. Let me reply: I dream of a republic independent, free, and democratic, of a republic economically prosperous and yet socially just; in short, of a humane republic which serves the individual and which therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve it in turn. Of a republic of well-rounded people, because without such it is impossible to solve any of our problems, human, economic, ecological, social, or political. — Vaclav Havel

The previous regime ... reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both their very essence and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine. — Vaclav Havel

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

When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete. — Vaclav Havel

I have said it so often: if the West does not stabilize the East, the East will destabilize the West. — Vaclav Havel

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

Man is a part of the world, and his spirit is part of the spirit of the world. We are merely a peculiar mode of Being, a living atom within it, or, rather, a cell that, if sufficiently open to itself and its own mystery, can also experience the mystery, the will, the pain, and the hope of the world. — Vaclav Havel

The point I am trying to make is that words are a mysterious, ambiguous, ambivalent, and perfidious phenomenon. They can be rays of light in a realm of darkness ... They can equally be lethal arrows. Worst of all, at times they can be one or the other. They can even be both at once! — Vaclav Havel

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

People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don't know where to go. — Vaclav Havel

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

I have read somewhere that in a totalitarian system martyrdom does better than thought. — Vaclav Havel

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

The real test of a man is not when he plays the role that he wants for himself but when he plays the role destiny has for him. — 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 that history again demands to be heard. — Vaclav Havel

Think of this: Hundreds of people today are doing things that not a single one of the them would have dared to do at the beginning of the Seventies. We are now living in a truly new and different situation. This is not because the government has become more tolerant; it simply had to get used to the new situation. It has had to yield to continuing pressure from below, which means pressure from all those apparently suicidal or exhibitionistic civic acts. — Vaclav Havel

Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred. — Vaclav Havel

What else but a profound feeling of being excluded can enable a person better to see the absurdity of the world and his own existence, or, to put it more soberly, the absurd dimensions of the world and his own existence? — Vaclav Havel

Communism was overthrown by life, by thought, by dignity. — Vaclav Havel

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

Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility. — Vaclav Havel

Truth must be integrated with love; morality is not whole without it. Love is the greatest strength of the powerless. Unity founded on love will never be coercion; power guided by love will never be violence. Love is all-powerful and will even overcome hatred. And only love can do this! — Vaclav Havel

When a person tries to act in accordance with his conscience, when he tries to speak the truth, when he tries to behave like a citizen, even in conditions where citizenship is degraded, it won't necessarily lead anywhere, but it might. There's one thing, however, that will never lead anywhere, and that is speculating that such behavior will lead somewhere. — Vaclav Havel

I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence. — Vaclav Havel

We ask ourselves all kinds of questions, such as why does a peacock have such beautiful feathers, and we may answer that he needs the feathers to impress a female peacock, but then we ask ourselves, and why is there a peacock? And then we ask, why is there anything living? And then we ask, why is there anything at all? And if you tell some advocate of scientism that the answer is a secret, he will go white hot and write a book. But it is a secret. And the experience of living with the secret and thinking about it is in itself a kind of faith. — Vaclav Havel

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

Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life. — Vaclav Havel

The most important thing is that man should be the measure of all structures, including economic structures, and not that man be made to measure for those structures. The most important thing is not to lose sight of personal relationships - i.e., the relationships between man and his co-workers, between subordinates and their superiors, between man and his work, between this work and its consequences. — Vaclav Havel

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

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

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

If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny his own self in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses, namely, the sense of humiliation. — Vaclav Havel

Human rights, human freedoms, and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world. These values are as powerful as they are because, under certain circumstances, people accept them without compulsion and are willing to die for them. — Vaclav Havel

Modern science kills God and takes his place on the vacant throne. Science is the sole legitimate arbiter of all relavent truth. — Vaclav Havel

It seems to me that one of the most basic human experiences, one that is genuinely universal and unites-or, more precisely, could unite-all of humanity, is the experience of transcendence in the broadest sense of the word. — Vaclav Havel

The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said. — Vaclav Havel

Consciousness precedes Being, and not the other way around, as Marxists claim. For this reason, the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human modesty, and in human responsibility. Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better. — Vaclav Havel

We live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain. — Vaclav Havel

Without the constantly living and articulated eperience of absurdity, there would be no reason to attempt to do something meaningful. And on the contrary, how can one experience one's own absurdity if one is not constantly seeking meaning? — 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

A genuinely fundamental and hopeful improvement in "systems" cannot happen without a significant shift in human consciousness. — Vaclav Havel

No one ever develops and achieves self-awareness in a vacuum, beyond all ears and systems. The period you grow up in and mature in always influences your thinking. This in itself requires no self-criticism. What is more important is how you have allowed yourself to be influenced, whether by good or by evil. — Vaclav Havel

There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause. — Vaclav Havel

Truth is not merely what we are thinking, but also why, to whom and under what circumstances we say it. — Vaclav Havel

Either we have hope within us or we don't It is a dimension of the soul, and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the World or observation of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. — Vaclav Havel

Courage means going against majority opinion in the name of the truth. — Vaclav Havel

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

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

Our concern is whether we can live with dignity in such a system, whether it serves people rather than people serving it. — Vaclav Havel

It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to that automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-consumer society, for they too are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in post-totalitarian societies. — Vaclav Havel

If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President. — Vaclav Havel

If the world is to change for the better it must start with a change in human consciousness, in the very humanness of modern man. — Vaclav Havel

Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost. — 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

The world is not divided into two types of being, one superior and the other merely surrounding it. Being, nature, the universe - they are all one infinitely complex and mysterious metaorganism of which we are but a part, though a unique one. — Vaclav Havel

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 absurdity. — Vaclav Havel

If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for. — Vaclav Havel

Hope 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

My dear fellow citizens: For forty years you have heard from my predecessors on this day different variations of the same theme: how our country flourished, how many millions of tons of steel we produced, how happy we all were, how we trusted our government, and what bright perspectives were unfolding in front of us. I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you. — Vaclav Havel

By perceiving ourselves as part of the river, we take responsibility for the river as a whole. — Vaclav Havel

If one were required to increase the dramatic seriousness of his face in relation to the seriousness of the problems he had to confront, he would quickly petrify and become his own statue. — Vaclav Havel

True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say? — Vaclav Havel

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

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

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

Time and time again I have been persuaded that a huge potential of goodwill is slumbering within our society. It's just that it's incoherent, suppressed, confused, crippled and perplexed. — Vaclav Havel

Self-confidence is not pride. Just the contrary: only a person or a nation that is self-confident, in the best sense of the word, is capable of listening to others, accepting them as equals, forgiving its enemies and regretting its own guilt. — Vaclav Havel

In my opinion, theater shouldn't give advice to citizens. — Vaclav Havel

All human suffering concerns each human being — Vaclav Havel

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

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

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought. — Vaclav Havel

It lies in human nature that where you experience your first laughs, you also remember the age kindly. — Vaclav Havel

As the interpretation of reality by the power structure, ideology is always subordinated ultimately to the interests of the structure. Therefore, it has a natural tendency to disengage itself from reality, to create a world of appearances, to become ritual ... Increasingly, the virtuosity of the ritual becomes more important than the reality hidden behind it. — Vaclav Havel

It's not true that you should first think up an idea for a better world and only then "put it into practice," but, rather, through the fact of your existence in the world, you create the idea or manifest it - create it, as it were, from the "material of the world," articulate it in the "language of the world. — Vaclav Havel

The tragic element in modern man, not ignore the meaning of his life, but it bothers him less and less. — Vaclav Havel

Ultimately, power only really listens to power, and if government is to be improved, we must be able to threaten its existence, not merely its reputation. — Vaclav Havel

We still don't know how to put morality ahead of politics, science, and economics. We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of our actions-if they are to be moral-is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success. — Vaclav Havel

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

Our social and economic statistics are telling us what we already know in our hearts: we have created a world that works for only a few. To change this, we must learn to act toward each other and our environment in profoundly different ways. — Vaclav Havel

I am not sure one is capable of reflecting absurdity without having a strong sense of meaning. Absurdity makes sense only against a meaningful background. It is the deeper meaning that is shedding light on the absurdity. There must be a vanish point, a metaphysical horizon if you will where absurdity and meaning merge. — Vaclav Havel

The Declaration of Independence states the the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it. — Vaclav Havel

Planetary democracy does not yet exist but our global civilization is already preparing a place for it. It is the very Earth we inhabit linked with Heaven above us. Only in this setting can the mutuality and the commonality of the human race be newly created with reverence and gratitude for that which transcends each of us and all of us together. — Vaclav Havel

At one time, the state of culture in Czechoslovakia was described, rather poignantly, as a 'Biafra of the spirit' ... I simply do not believe that we have all lain down and died. I see far more than graves and tombstones around me. I see evidence of this in ... expensive books on astronomy printed in a hundred thousand copies (they would hardly find that many readers in the USA) ... — Vaclav Havel

In any case, ideals are something we strive for; they are somewhere on the horizon of our efforts; they provide meaning and direction; they are not, however, static quotas that we either fulfill or do not. — Vaclav Havel

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

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

Let us admit that most of us writers feel an essential aversion to politics. By taking such a position, however, we accept the perverted principle of specialization, according to which some are paid to write about the horrors of the world and human responsibility and others to deal with those horrors and bear the human responsibility for them. — Vaclav Havel

It's not hard to stand behind one's successes. But to accept responsibility for one's failures ... that is devishly hard! — Vaclav Havel

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. — Vaclav Havel

I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me. — Vaclav Havel

I am convinced that we will never build a democratic state based on rule of law if we do not at the same time build a state that is-regardless of how unscientific this may sound to the ears of a political scientist-humane, moral, intellectual and spiritual, and cultural. — Vaclav Havel

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

Hope is not a feeling. It is not the belief that things will turn out well, but the conviction that what you are doing makes sense, no matter how things turn out. — Vaclav Havel

The award is destined for scientists who do not fear to touch on some of the darkest aspects of being without betraying what they have achieved. On the contrary, they head in this direction. — Vaclav Havel