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Vaclav Havel [1936-2011] Czechoslovakian

Rank: 10
Leader, Former President of Czechoslovakia

Václav Havel was a Czech writer, philosopher, political dissident, and statesman. From 1989 to 1992, he served as the last president of Czechoslovakia. He then served as the first president of the Czech Republic after the Czech–Slovak split. Within Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays, and memoirs.

Hope, Power, Truth, Alone, Chance, Change, Freedom, Government, Leadership, Peace, Sad, Success

Quote	Tags	Rank
The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.	Power	101
When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete.	Freedom, Truth	102
Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.		103
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.		104
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.		105
Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.	Peace	106
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.		107
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.	Government	108
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.	Leadership, Power	109
Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.	Sad	110
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.	Hope	111
There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.	Truth	112
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.	Hope, Success	113
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.	Change	114
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 its absurdity.	Hope	115
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.		116
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.	Hope	117
There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.		118
The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.	Alone	119
Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you.	Hope	120
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprising.		121
Lying can never save us from another lie.		122
What's certain is that a totalitarian enclave like Cuba's can't continue to exist, so change will definitely come there, eventually.		123
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.		124
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.		125
The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.		126
Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.	Chance	201
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.		202
In my opinion, theater shouldn't give advice to citizens.		203
Theater is there to search for questions. It doesn't give you instructions.		204
I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.		205
I think it's important for one to take a certain distance from oneself.		206
It lies in human nature that where you experience your first laughs, you also remember the age kindly.		207

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