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
Theater is there to search for questions. It doesn't give you instructions.
humility men world
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.
responsibility careers patriotism
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.
meaningful responsibility community
The question is...whether we shall, by whatever means, succeed in reconstituting the natural world as the true terrain of politics, rehabilitating the personal experience of human beings as the initial measure of things, placing morality above politics and responsibility above our desires, in making human community meaningful, in returning content to human speech, in reconstituting, as the focus of all social action, the autonomous, integral, and dignified human I,...
success hope nature
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.
giving-up struggle causes
The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle.
soul humans orientation
Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times.
military hero creativity
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.
leadership powerful hero
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.
drama order theatre
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprising.
doubt distrust no-doubt
There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them.
long historical secret
Life cannot be destroyed for good, neithercan history be brought entirely to a halt. A secret streamlet trickles on beneath the heavy lid of inertia and pseudo-events, slowly and inconspicuously undercutting it. It may be a long process, but one day it must happen: the lid will no longer hold and will start to crack. This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and uniquesomething truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard.
machines earth regulation
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.
betrayal awards scientist
The award is destined for scientists who do not fear to touch on some of the darkest aspects of being without betraying what they have achieved. On the contrary, they head in this direction.