Václav Havel: Trending quotes

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Václav Havel: 252 quotes10 likes

“There used to be a time when this country's president could have delivered the same New Year's Address he had given a year before, and nobody would have noticed.
Fortunately, that time has passed.”

Václav Havel

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

“Full freedom of speech and expression prevails in our country, and freedom of assembly and association is guaranteed.”

Václav Havel

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

“Without the constantly living and articulated experience 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?”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5 : The Politics of Hope, p. 114

“People, your government has returned to you!”

Václav Havel

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

“This is related to the crisis, or to the transformation, of science as the basis of the modern conception of the world.
The dizzying development of this science, with its unconditional faith in objective reality and its complete dependency on general and rationally knowable laws, led to the birth of modern technological civilization. It is the first civilization in the history of the human race that spans the entire globe and firmly binds together all human societies, submitting them to a common global destiny.”

Václav Havel

The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)

“I think that it is my duty today to remind you as well of the good things that have happened, accomplishments that a year ago we could scarcely have imagined.”

Václav Havel

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

“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 masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people's own failure as individuals.”

Václav Havel book The Power of the Powerless

Living in Truth (1986), The Power of the Powerless

“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.”

Václav Havel

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

“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.”

Václav Havel

Living in Truth (1986), An Anatomy of Reticence

“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.”

Václav Havel

Letter to Husák

“The previous regime — armed with its arrogant and intolerant ideology — reduced man to a force of production, and nature to a tool of production. In this it attacked both their very substance and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people, skillfully working in their own country, to the nuts and bolts of some monstrously huge, noisy and stinking machine, whose real meaning was not clear to anyone.”

Václav Havel

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

“My dear fellow citizens,
For forty years you heard from my predecessors on this day different variations on the same theme: how our country was flourishing, how many million 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.”

Václav Havel

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

“I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 2 : Writing for the Stage

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

Václav Havel

Quoted in Amnesty International's essay "From Prisoner to President – A Tribute" http://www.artforamnesty.org/aoc/biog_havel.html

“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.”

Václav Havel

Speech of October 1989, accepting a peace prize

“You may ask what kind of 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 that serves the individual and that therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve it in turn. Of a republic of well-rounded people, because without such people it is impossible to solve any of our problems — human, economic, ecological, social, or political.”

Václav Havel

New Year's Address to the Nation (1990)

“If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President.”

Václav Havel

Address to the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London quoted in The Independent, London (24 March 1990)

“One has to greatly admire the patience with which our society has come to terms with all the challenges of these dramatic times, the extent of which few of us could have anticipated in those heady, revolutionary days.”

Václav Havel

Farewell Address (2003)

“I know we have still done very little, and that the main tasks still lie ahead of us. I would say that we have just completed a year of preparation in which the conditions for a new environment have been created.”

Václav Havel

New Year's Address to the Nation (1991)

“We are finding out that what looked like a neglected house a year ago is in fact a ruin.”

Václav Havel

Statement about the conditions in Czechoslovakia and other previously Soviet Bloc countries. Daily Telegraph London (3 January 1991)