Vaclav Havel
Vaclav Havel
Václav Havel; 5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech writer, philosopher, 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 Republicafter the Czech–Slovak split. Within Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays, and memoirs...
NationalityCzechoslovakian
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth5 October 1936
CityPrague, Czech Republic
motivational connections ability
Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena.
identity world way
Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them.
government able reputation
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.
hope lying soul
The hope of the world lies in the rehabilitation of the living human being, not just the body but also the soul.
responsibility order civilization
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.
distance laughing perspective
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.
respect peace freedom
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.
spring greatness important
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.
inspiring dream hope
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.
civilization people democracy
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.
nature people outcomes
People thought they could explain and conquer nature-yet the outcome is that they destroyed it and disinherited themselves from it.
spiritual hero law
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.
hero men tragedy
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.
failure responsibility accepting
It's not hard to stand behind one's successes. But to accept responsibility for one's failures... that is devishly hard!