Vaclav 4 Quotes

#1. The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.

Vaclav Havel

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. I have said it so often: if the West does not stabilize the East, the East will destabilize the West.

Vaclav Havel

#6. Everyone [in higher education] was what I call drillers of deeper wells. These academics sit at the bottom of a deep well and they look up and see a sliver of the sky. They know everything about that little sliver of sky and nothing else. I scan all my horizons.

Vaclav Smil

#7. I never intended to be a politician or office-seeker.

Vaclav Klaus

#8. 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

#9. But if I were to say who influenced me most, then I'd say Franz Kafka. And his works were always anchored in the Central European region.

Vaclav Havel

#10. When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.

Vaclav Havel

#11. There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them.

Vaclav Havel

#12. 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

#13. English is the 'language of liberty' for nations emerging from years of cultural oppression.

Vaclav Havel

#14. We served on the editorial board of a literary monthly called Face in 1968 and 1969. He was a young writer, and I was also interested in broad cultural issues. We agreed on all major issues and became friends.

Vaclav Klaus

#15. 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

#16. EU expansion is, unfortunately, continuing without a constitution, as a gradual process of standardization - and that's far more dangerous. It is very difficult to slow down this process, which is being pushed forward without significant public participation.

Vaclav Klaus

#17. 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

#18. The best environment for man is the environment of liberty

Vaclav Klaus

#19. . . . and Vaclav's special new shoes with the lights on the heels and the Velcro everywhere, because in America no one, not even small children, has time to tie his own shoes, and everything must have flashing lights.

Haley Tanner

#20. Theater is there to search for questions. It doesn't give you instructions.

Vaclav Havel

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. Responsibility is something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success. Responsibility to the order of Being, where, and only where, they will be properly judged.

Vaclav Havel

#24. If a single writer in a country is in chains, then there are some links of that chain that binds us all.

Vaclav Havel

#25. It is not enough to invent new machines, new regulations, or new institutions. We must understand differently and more perfectly the true purpose of our existence on this earth.

Vaclav Havel

#26. True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?

Vaclav Havel

#27. 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

#28. I do not consider the Lisbon Treaty to be a good thing for Europe, for the freedom of Europe, or for the Czech Republic.

Vaclav Klaus

#29. That means following a very restrictive fiscal and monetary policy which will squeeze the monopolies and cut their subsidies. On the micro level we will allow other economic agents, both domestic and foreign, to compete with them.

Vaclav Klaus

#30. I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me.

Vaclav Havel