Quotes from book
Disturbing the Peace

Disturbing the Peace

Václav Havel

On the eve of his fiftieth birthday, Vaclav Havel looks back on his life in the theatre, the literary politics of his early years and the stagnation that followed the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Havel also discusses his part in his country's struggle to restore morality and civic responsibility to public life and the price he has paid for this.

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

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

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

“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.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 1 : Growing Up "Outside", p. 11

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5 : The Politics of Hope
Variant translation or similar statement: 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.
Context: 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.

“There's always something suspicious about an intellectual on the winning side.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5

“The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 2 : Writing for the Stage, p. 72

“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.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 2 : Writing for the Stage, p. 67

“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.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

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

“Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5

“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.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 1 : Growing Up "Outside", p. 11

“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.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Introduction, p. xvi
Disturbing the Peace (1986)

“A genuinely fundamental and hopeful improvement in "systems" cannot happen without a significant shift in human consciousness.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 1 : Growing Up "Outside", p. 17

“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.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 4 : Public Enemy

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

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5 : The Politics of Hope, p. 111

“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

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

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 3 : Facing the Establishment

“We introduced a new model of behavior: don't get involved in diffuse general ideological polemics with the center, to whom numerous concrete causes are always being sacrificed; fight "only" for those concrete causes, and be prepared to fight for them unswervingly, to the end. In other words, don't get mixed up in backroom wheeling and dealing, but play an open game.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 3 : Facing the Establishment, p. 83

“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.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

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

“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."”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 1 : Growing Up "Outside", p. 12

“The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning — in other words, of absurdity — the more energetically meaning is sought.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 5

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