110+ Vaclav Havel Quotes (Political, Activist And Visionary)

Vaclav Havel was a Czechoslovakian leader who served as the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic. He was a moral voice for his people and a leader in the fight against communism. Havel is remembered for his commitment to human rights and democracy, and his works in literature and philosophy.

Top 10 Vaclav Havel Quotes

1. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.
2. 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.
3. Nothing is more powerful than individuals acting out of their own conscience.
4. Without commonly shared and widely entrenched moral values and obligations, neither the law, nor democratic government, nor even the market economy will function properly.
5. This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, and one thoughtless word can provoke an utterly nonsensical furor.
6. 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.
7. Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred.
8. We live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.
9. 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.
10. 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.

Vaclav Havel Short Quotes

• Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.
• Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.
• All human suffering concerns each human being.
• There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them.
• The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle.
• True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?
• There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.
• There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.
• I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.
• Courage means going against majority opinion in the name of the truth.

Vaclav Havel Famous Quotes And Sayings

Human rights are universal and indivisible. Human freedom is also indivisible: if it is denied to anyone in the world, it is therefore denied, indirectly, to all people. This is why we cannot remain silent in the face of evil or violence; silence merely encourages them. — Vaclav Havel

Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole. — Vaclav Havel

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

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. — Vaclav Havel

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. — Vaclav Havel

The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance. — Vaclav Havel

Human rights, human freedoms... and human dignity have their deepest roots somewhere outside the perceptible world... while the state is a human creation, human beings are the creation of God. — Vaclav Havel

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

Ownership is not a vice, not something to be ashamed of, but rather a commitment, and an instrument by which the general good can be served. — Vaclav Havel

I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart. — Vaclav Havel

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. — Vaclav Havel

The Declaration of Independence states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it. — Vaclav Havel

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

As in everything else, I must start with myself. That is: in all circumstances try to be decent, just, tolerant, and understanding, and at the same time try to resist corruption and deception. In other words, I must do my utmost to act in harmony with my conscience and my better self. — Vaclav Havel

Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge. — Vaclav Havel

Frank Zappa was one of the gods of the Czech underground, I thought of him as a friend. Whenever I feel like escaping from the world of the Presidency, I think of him. — Vaclav 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. — Vaclav Havel

I do think Russian foreign policy is very savvy. There's a need for great caution because the Russians are able to discreetly blackmail countries. — Vaclav 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. — Vaclav 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. — Vaclav Havel

I have found that good taste, oddly enough, plays an important role in politics. Why is it like that? The most probable reason is that good taste is a visible manifestation of human sensibility toward the world, environment, people. — Vaclav Havel

The world is not divided into two types of being, one superior and the other merely surrounding it. Being, nature, the universe - they are all one infinitely complex and mysterious metaorganism of which we are but a part, though a unique one. — Vaclav Havel

Technological measures are important, but equally important is... a consciousness of the commonality of all living beings and an emphasis on shared responsibility. — Vaclav Havel

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

Modern science kills God and takes his place on the vacant throne. Science is the sole legitimate arbiter of all relavent truth. — Vaclav Havel

Every consession gives rise to further concessions, we cannot back down, because behind us there is only an abyss, we must keep our promises and demand that they be kept. — Vaclav Havel

I am convinced that we will never build a democratic state based on rule of law if we do not at the same time build a state that is-regardless of how unscientific this may sound to the ears of a political scientist-humane, moral, intellectual and spiritual, and cultural. — Vaclav Havel

Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have -- by disrupting that order -- a way of surprising. — Vaclav Havel

The hope of the world lies in the rehabilitation of the living human being, not just the body but also the soul. — Vaclav Havel

It seems to me that one of the most basic human experiences, one that is genuinely universal and unites-or, more precisely, could unite-all of humanity, is the experience of transcendence in the broadest sense of the word. — Vaclav Havel

Planetary democracy does not yet exist but our global civilization is already preparing a place for it. It is the very Earth we inhabit linked with Heaven above us. Only in this setting can the mutuality and the commonality of the human race be newly created with reverence and gratitude for that which transcends each of us and all of us together. — Vaclav Havel

Let us admit that most of us writers feel an essential aversion to politics. By taking such a position, however, we accept the perverted principle of specialization, according to which some are paid to write about the horrors of the world and human responsibility and others to deal with those horrors and bear the human responsibility for them. — Vaclav Havel

It was never the people who complained of the universality of human rights, nor did the people consider human rights as a Western or Northern imposition. It was often their leaders who did so. — Vaclav Havel

Man is in fact nailed down - like Christ on the Cross - to a grid of paradoxes. He balances between the torment of not knowing his mission and the joy of carrying it out, between nothingness and meaningfulness. And like Christ, he is in fact victorious by virtue of his defeats. — Vaclav Havel

Though my heart may be left of centre, I have always known that the only economic system that works is a market economy... This is the only natural economy, the only kind that makes sense, the only one that can lead to prosperity, because it is the only one that reflects the nature of life itself. — Vaclav Havel

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. — Vaclav Havel

The only salvation of the world today... is the rapid dissemination of the basic values of the West, that is, the ideas of democracy, human rights, the civil society, and the free market. — Vaclav Havel

If by believing you mean praying to an anthropomorphic deity who created the world and half controls it and half observes it, then I am probably not a believer. But if you mean that it is not all accidental, that there is a mystery to existence, a deeper meaning, that I do believe in. — Vaclav Havel

There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, we live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain. — Vaclav Havel

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. — Vaclav Havel

The previous regime ... reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both their very essence and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine. — Vaclav Havel

I have read somewhere that in a totalitarian system martyrdom does better than thought. — Vaclav Havel

I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me. — Vaclav Havel

A genuinely fundamental and hopeful improvement in "systems" cannot happen without a significant shift in human consciousness. — Vaclav Havel

When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete. — Vaclav Havel

I am not sure one is capable of reflecting absurdity without having a strong sense of meaning. Absurdity makes sense only against a meaningful background. It is the deeper meaning that is shedding light on the absurdity. There must be a vanish point, a metaphysical horizon if you will where absurdity and meaning merge. — Vaclav Havel

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

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. — Vaclav Havel

Man is not an omipotent master of the universe, allowed to do with impunity whatever he thinks, or whatever suits him at the moment. The world we live in is made of an immensely complex and mysterious tissue about which we know very little and which we must treat with utmost humility. — Vaclav Havel

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. — Vaclav Havel

Those who rebelled against totalitarian rule and those who simply managed to remain themselves and think freely, were all persecuted. We should not forget any of those who paid for our present freedom in one way or another. — Vaclav Havel

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

Lying can never save us from another lie. — Vaclav Havel

If you want to see your plays performed the way you wrote them, become President. — Vaclav Havel

The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it. — Vaclav Havel

Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena. — Vaclav Havel

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. — Vaclav Havel

Those that say that individuals are not capable of changing anything are only looking for excuses. — Vaclav Havel

I think its important for one to take a certain distance from oneself. — Vaclav Havel

Without the constantly living and articulated eperience 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? — Vaclav Havel

In any case, ideals are something we strive for; they are somewhere on the horizon of our efforts; they provide meaning and direction; they are not, however, static quotas that we either fulfill or do not. — Vaclav Havel

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

I personally think President [Hosni] Mubarak, who's done a lot for Egypt, should acknowledge that his time has come and step down right away. — Vaclav Havel

People, your Government has returned to you! — Vaclav Havel

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

It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. It is necessary to change and improve our understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the world. Only such a new understanding will allow us to develop new models of behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global regulations, treaties and institutions with a new spirit and meaning. — Vaclav Havel

There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides, to distrust words, and indict them for the horrors that might slumber unobtrusively within them --isn't this, after all, the true vocation of the intellectual? — Vaclav Havel

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

We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. — Vaclav Havel

The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension. — Vaclav 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. — Vaclav Havel

If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for. — Vaclav Havel

Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprising. — Vaclav Havel

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. — Vaclav Havel

If one were required to increase the dramatic seriousness of his face in relation to the seriousness of the problems he had to confront, he would quickly petrify and become his own statue. — Vaclav Havel

Either we have hope within us or we don't It is a dimension of the soul, and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the World or observation of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. — Vaclav Havel

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

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

The kind of hope that I often think about…I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us, or we don’t. It is a dimension of the soul It’s not essentially dependent upon some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. — Vaclav Havel

The most important thing is that man should be the measure of all structures, including economic structures, and not that man be made to measure for those structures. The most important thing is not to lose sight of personal relationships - i.e., the relationships between man and his co-workers, between subordinates and their superiors, between man and his work, between this work and its consequences. — Vaclav Havel

The real test of a man is not when he plays the role that he wants for himself but when he plays the role destiny has for him. — Vaclav Havel

You can't spend your whole life criticizing something and then, when you have the chance to do it better, refuse to go near it. — Vaclav Havel

A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accouterments trappings of mass civilization, and who has no roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society. — Vaclav Havel

When a man has his heart in the right place and good taste, he can not only do well in politics but is even predetermined for it. If someone is modest and does not yearn for power, he is certainly not ill-equipped to engage in politics; on the contrary, he belongs there. What is needed in politics is not the ability to lie but rather the sensibility to know when, where, how and to whom to say things. — Vaclav Havel

It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to that automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-consumer society, for they too are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in post-totalitarian societies. — Vaclav Havel

The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin -- and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost. — Vaclav Havel

The salvation of the world lies in the human heart. — Vaclav Havel

It's not hard to stand behind one's successes. But to accept responsibility for one's failures... that is devishly hard! — Vaclav Havel

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. — Vaclav Havel

You do not become a dissident just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society. — Vaclav Havel

Life Lessons by Vaclav Havel

1. Vaclav Havel taught that it is important to stay true to your beliefs and values, even when faced with opposition.
2. He also demonstrated that it is possible to effect change through peaceful means, rather than resorting to violence.
3. Furthermore, he showed that it is possible to lead with integrity and humility, even when in a position of power.