Top 100 Václav Havel Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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.”

— Václav Havel

52. “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.”

— Václav Havel

53. “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

54. “Modern science kills God and takes his place on the vacant throne. Science is the sole legitimate arbiter of all relavent truth.”

— Václav Havel

55. “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.”

— Václav Havel

56. “There’s always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.”

— Václav Havel

57. “The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning – in other words, of absurdity – the more energetically meaning is sought.”

— Václav Havel

58. “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.”

— Václav Havel

59. “A genuinely fundamental and hopeful improvement in “systems” cannot happen without a significant shift in human consciousness.”

— Václav Havel

60. “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?”

— Václav Havel

61. “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.”

— Václav Havel

62. “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?”

— Václav Havel

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

— Václav Havel

64. “I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.”

— Václav Havel

65. “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

66. “The hope of the world lies in the rehabilitation of the living human being, not just the body but also the soul.”

— Václav Havel

67. “People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don’t know where to go.”

— Václav Havel

68. “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.”

— Václav Havel

69. “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.”

— Václav Havel

70. “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.”

— Václav Havel

71. “True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?”

— Václav Havel

72. “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.”

— Václav Havel

73. “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.”

— Václav Havel

74. “Nothing is more powerful than individuals acting out of their own conscience.”

— Václav Havel

75. “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

76. “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.”

— Václav Havel

77. “We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.”

— Václav Havel

78. “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.”

— Václav Havel

79. “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.”

— Václav Havel

80. “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.”

— Václav Havel

81. “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.”

— Václav Havel

82. “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.”

— Václav Havel

83. “Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.”

— Václav Havel

84. “Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have – by disrupting that order – a way of surprising.”

— Václav Havel

85. “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.”

— Václav Havel

86. “To serve grand ideas with a major work is not bad, nor is it all there’s to art.”

— Václav Havel

87. “If a single writer in a country is in chains, then there are some links of that chain that binds us all.”

— Václav Havel

88. “I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me.”

— Václav Havel

89. “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.”

— Václav Havel

90. “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.”

— Václav Havel

91. “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.”

— Václav Havel

92. “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.”

— Václav Havel

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

— Václav Havel

94. “I think its important for one to take a certain distance from oneself.”

— Václav Havel

95. “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.”

— Václav Havel

96. “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.”

— Václav Havel

97. “Truth is not merely what we are thinking, but also why, to whom and under what circumstances we say it.”

— Václav Havel

98. “In my opinion, theater shouldn’t give advice to citizens.”

— Václav Havel

99. “I have read somewhere that in a totalitarian system martyrdom does better than thought.”

— Václav Havel

100. “Time and time again I have been persuaded that a huge potential of goodwill is slumbering within our society. It’s just that it’s incoherent, suppressed, confused, crippled and perplexed.”

— Václav Havel