Václav Havel Quotes

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.

~ Václav 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.

~ Václav Havel

For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.

~ Václav 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.

~ Václav 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.

~ Václav Havel

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.

~ Václav Havel

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.

~ Václav Havel

Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

~ Václav Havel

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

~ Václav 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.

~ Václav Havel

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.

~ Václav Havel

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

~ Václav Havel

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

~ Václav Havel

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

~ Václav Havel

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.

~ Václav Havel